The Manual of Style (often abbreviated MoS) is a style guide for all articles on the Age of Empires Series Wiki. It establishes our house style, to help editors produce articles with consistent, clear, and precise language, layout, and formatting. The goal is to make the encyclopedia easier and more intuitive to use. Consistency in style and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion; this is especially important within an article.
These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for the Age of Empires Series Wiki. A more expansive set of guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at the Wikipedia Manual of Style.
Articles
Article titles
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. As such, an appropriately chosen title aids the reader's navigation and avoids confusion.
The following points are critical to formatting article titles:
- Use "sentence case" or "sentence-style": The initial letter of a title is capitalized; otherwise, capital letters are used only where they would be used in a normal sentence, e.g. God power, not God Power.
- Use the singular form: Article titles should be singular, e.g. Myth unit, not Myth units.
- Add the game reference at the end: Articles that describe an object or person that appears on multiple games within the Age of Empires series require their game reference in brackets at the end. The reference is not to be abbreviated, e.g. Wheelbarrow (Age of Empires), not Wheelbarrow (AoE) or Age of Empires: Wheelbarrow.
- In this case, an additional disambiguation page is required.
- Articles titles for a unit must not include titles or ranks: Titles or ranks such as Elite or Royal are not to be included in the article title, e.g. Strelet, not Imperial Strelet. An exception is made for non-unique units of Age of Empires II, where seperate pages like Steppe Lancer and Elite Steppe Lancer are allowed.
- Other rules of reference disambiguation
- Disambiguation is used on proper nouns when there are more than one article of same name (in either case) in more than one game of the main series.
- Game reference disambiguation is needed for Light Cavalry (Age of Empires II) even in the presence of Light cavalry (Age of Empires III). The page Light cavalry (of which the latter is a subset of) can be used as a disambiguation, despite the former being a specific unit and the other two being types of units.
- Game reference disambiguation is not needed when spellings are different, like Inca and Incas. For names like Arbalétrier, the disambiguation considers the é as normal e.
- In cases where two articles of the same name appear in the same game, like Hausa and Portuguese (Age of Empires III) (civilizations) vs Portuguese (Alliance) and Hausa (Alliance) (Alliances), the lesser significant article if by a wide margin is given an appropriate reference disambiguation, and the larger article is given normal disambiguation, if any.
- In cases where both articles are almost equally significant and no other article of the same name exists in another game, disambiguation happens from another but appropriate reference, like Moroccans (civilization) and Moroccans (Alliance).
- In cases where both articles are almost equally significant and that an article of the same name exists in another game as well, the existence of article in other games is ignored for title pages and referencing works same as in the previous case. However, in such cases, disambiguation pages become of utmost importance.
- Disambiguation should be used on common nouns (mostly unit types) if there is a possibility of a similar page in other games of the series. This is done to prevent people from confusing and adding content on one game in other games' articles.
- Disambiguation in mounted archer unit (Age of Empires II) should be used even if there were no other mounted archer unit pages.
- A similar disambiguation should be added for category pages. Disambiguation is used in Category:Mongols (Age of Empires IV) to avoid the possibility of adding Mangudai (Age of Empires II), Drill, and Nomads in the category if it were named Category:Mongols.
Article headings
Headings organize the article and give structure to it. They are a great help while navigating a page. As such, they need to be concise.
The following points are critical to formatting headings:
- Use "sentence case" or "sentence-style": The initial letter of a title is capitalized; otherwise, capital letters are used only where they would be used in a normal sentence, e.g. Further statistics, not Further Statistics.
- If applicable, use the plural form: Headings should be plural if applicable, e.g. Team bonuses, not Team bonus.
- There are three exceptions:
- Overview
- Strategy
- History
- There are three exceptions:
- These headings are never used in plural form.
Disambiguation pages
Disambiguation pages always have the form showed in the following example.
{{disambig}}
The Wheelbarrow is an economic technology in Age of Empires II and Age of Mythology: Tale of the Dragon.
- For the Age of Empires II article, see Wheelbarrow (Age of Empires II).
- For the Age of Mythology article, see Wheelbarrow (Age of Mythology).
Structure
Although pages dealing with different topics have different content and headings there is a general structure every article follows. The following points are always in the shown order:
- Disambiguation: This part is only required if there are articles in the wiki that might be confused with the shown article. Links to the other articles are given here. The need for disambiguation not only arises due to same or similar names, but also because what the pages are or can be called in real life or historically. For example, there are historical similarities between the Teutons in Age of Empires II and the Holy Roman Empire in Age of Empires IV, and also between Romans (Age of Empires II) and Byzantines (Age of Empires II).
- Infobox: Unit, building, technology, civilization, scenario, and character pages require their corresponding infobox.
- Introduction: This part gives a brief overview over the article. The contents show below this part.
- Main page: This part strongly varies depending of the content the article deals with.
- History: Historical information taken out of the game files goes at the end of the article.
- Gallery: The gallery shows images that do not fit in the floating text or would overload the main part of the article.
- Navigation: Navigation templates go to the very bottom of any article.
The Cavalry Archer (Age of Empires II) page is a good example to demonstrate that structure.
Cross-game articles
If an article describes something or someone that appears in more than just one game of the series but is covered by a single article, e.g. a game mechanic, than the subsections are given in the following chronological order, if applicable:
- Age of Empires
- Age of Empires II
- Age of Mythology
- Age of Empires III
- Age of Empires IV
Civilization listing
- When listing civilizations in Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Age of Empires III, or Age of Empires IV, list them in an alphabetical order, except when the case needs them to be in chronological order of being added to the game. In case more than one civilization is added at the same time, alphabetical order is used here as well.
- When listing civilizations in Age of Mythology, list them as follows (which follows the chronological order of development):
- Greeks
- Egyptians
- Norse
- Atlanteans
- Chinese
Spelling
American spelling is used on all articles on the Age of Empires Series Wiki and on any template transcribed on articles. There are three exceptions:
- On article comments, blog posts, talk pages, and user pages, other regional variants may be used.
- If quoting a source, never alter any part of the quotation, even if it does not use American spelling.
- Regional variants can be listed in the Trivia section of the page.
Capital letters
Unnecessary capitalization should be avoided. Capitalization should be reserved for proper names only.
- All characters, units, buildings, and technologies are considered proper nouns and are always capitalized, even if they describe a generic object.
Incorrect Khmer villagers can garrison in houses. Correct Khmer Villagers can garrison in Houses. Incorrect There are sheep and berry bushes nearby. Correct There are Sheep and Berry Bushes nearby.
- If a word does not address a specific entity, but summarizes multiple different entities or entire branches, the summarizing word is written in lowercase.
Incorrect The city is guarded with Walls and Towers. Correct The city is guarded with walls and towers.
- However, if objects (e.g. the walls and towers in the example above) are known to be of a specific type and described as such (i.e. are proper nouns), they must be capitalized.
Incorrect The city is guarded with stone walls and watch towers. Correct The city is guarded with Stone Walls and Watch Towers.
- Furthermore, the word 'Age' is always capitalized when referring to the in-game concept.
Incorrect Advance through the ages. Correct Advance through the Ages.
- Unit branches as well as the word 'unit' are never capitalized, except when they are part of a proper noun or given as classification in the infobox.
Incorrect Light Cavalry are quick Cavalry Units that excel at combating Siege Weapons. Correct Light Cavalry are quick cavalry units that excel at combating siege weapons.
- The Light Cavalry in this example is a specific unit and therefore must be capitalized; the other terms must not.
Italics
Whenever mentioning a title of the Age of Empires series (including expansion and re-release names), write the title in italics.
Incorrect The Dutch are a civilization in Age of Empires III. Correct The Dutch are a civilization in Age of Empires III.
Punctuation
Apostrophes
Consistent use of the straight (or typewriter) apostrophe ( ' ) is recommended, as opposed to the curly (or typographic) apostrophe ( ’ ).
Quotation marks
- Use double quotation marks: Enclose quotations with double quotation marks, e.g. Cuauhtemoc said, "The Ottomans are strong... It must be their coffee." Enclose quotations within quotations with single quotation marks, e.g. Cuauhtemoc said, "Ar-til-ler-y? What is this 'Artillery' you speak of?"
Brackets and parentheses
- If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here).
- If one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets.
There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should be preceded by a space, except in unusual cases; for example, when it is preceded by an opening quotation mark, another opening bracket, or a portion of a word.
Commas
- Use commas to structure large numbers.
Incorrect Researching Spies can cost up to 30000 gold. Correct Researching Spies can cost up to 30,000 gold.
- Use serial commas. This is more consistent with the recommendations of authoritative style guides.
Incorrect A Wonder costs 1,000 wood, gold and stone. Correct A Wonder costs 1,000 wood, gold, and stone.
- Modern practice is against excessive use of commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed.
Terminal punctuation
- Clusters of question marks, exclamation marks, or a combination of them (such as the interrobang), are highly informal and inappropriate in articles.
- Use the exclamation mark with restraint. It is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally unsuitable for an encyclopedia.
Spacing
- Never place a space before commas, semicolons, colons, or terminal punctuation.
- Always place a space after the punctuation marks just mentioned, unless it is the end of a paragraph, dot point, list element, or the article.
- Use one space after terminal punctuation. The use of double spaces is pointless as MediaWiki automatically condenses any number of spaces to just one when rendering the page.
Dates
Dates should be mentioned in full formats with the names of month rather than month number. The most preferable format is "MMMM D, YYYY". Eg: January 1, 2000.
For mentioning a date where only the month and year are known, use the format "MMMM YYYY", eg: January 2000.
Numbers
- In general, write whole numbers one through nine as words, write other numbers that take two words or fewer to say as either numerals or words, and write all other numbers as numerals: 1/5 or one fifth, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred, but 3.75, 544, 21 million). This applies to both ordinal and cardinal numbers.
- Use a comma to delimit numbers with four or more digits to the left of the decimal point: 12,345 and 1,000.
Grammar
- For the possessive of singular nouns ending with just one s, add just an apostrophe.
- For a normal plural noun, ending with a pronounced s, form the possessive by adding just an apostrophe e.g. his armies' power.
Tense
- Past tense must only be used on articles or sections dealing with historic content.
- Present tense must be used on any section and article where it does not conflict with the first guideline.
Vocabulary
Formal use of language is mandatory on all canon encyclopedia articles e.g. Paladins have a very strong attack and heavy armor, not Paladins are awesome and tanky.
Third person
- All articles are written in the third person. In strategy parts and campaign walkthroughs where the reader needs to be addressed, they are referred to as 'the player', but never as 'you', e.g. The player starts at the southeast of the map. not You start at the southeast of the map.
Formality and neutrality
- Uncontracted forms such as do not or it is are the default in encyclopedic style; don't and it's are too informal.
- On encyclopedia articles, avoid such phrases as remember that and note that, which address readers directly in a less-than-encyclopedic tone. Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, and call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not tell readers that something is ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, unfortunate, etc. This supplies a point of view. Simply state the sourced facts and allow readers to draw their own conclusions.
Images
- Main article: Age of Empires Series Wiki:Images
Links
- Link sufficiently: It is important to link sufficiently to help the reader gather all the information needed. It is especially important to link units, buildings, technologies, and civilizations properly, e.g. Pikemen are very effective against cavalry, particularly elephants.
- Avoid redundant links: Redundant links (e.g. The Priest is a special unit in Age of Empires) distract the reader, clutter the page, and make future maintenance harder.
- Do not use external links in the body of an article. Articles can include an external links section at the end, pointing to further information outside Age of Empires Series Wiki as opposed to citing sources. An important exception is linking notable events (like The Battle at the Kalka River), characters (like Napoleon Bonaparte), units (like Janissary), etc to appropriate Wikipedia articles for further reading.
- Avoid advertisements: Say when talking about Centurion helments, linking to a page which sells similar helmets is prohibited.
Miscellaneous
Source mode editing markup
- Place spaces on either side of the text in a heading e.g.
== Heading ==
. - Place a blank line before a line containing a heading, except when a sub-heading immediately follows a heading, where there should be no blank line between the heading and the sub-heading.
- Do not place a blank line between a heading and the text or files below it.
- If used,
{{Main}}
should be added immediately under the heading. If it is followed by a file, the file link should be immediately under it before a blank line separating the file link and the beginning of the text. - File link parameters should appear in this order:
[[File:Filename.png|thumb|right|200px|Description.]]
- Place blank lines before and after a file, separating it from body text.
- Place a space after the asterisk and hash symbols in unordered and ordered lists respectively, so that each new list item is easier to find e.g.
* Item
. - Start different source code types in different lines.
[[File:Filename.png|thumb]]'''Filename''' is a ...
should be avoided by inserting a line break in the source code between]]
andFilename
.
Other points
- Quotes may be added to any page.
- Speculation or personal opinions should not be added to any Age of Empires Series Wiki article.
Page structure
The following provides the general page structure for most uses cases, along with the reasons why they follow that order. Ignore points which will not be used on that particular page.
- {{For}}/{{ForNolink}} - The first thing a viewer should see if they have visited the correct page
- Pan page templates - Since they apply to the entire article, they have to be at the top
- Infobox
- Short description
- Ability - Ability before discussion so that we know what we are talking about
- Tactics/Strategy (discussion)
- Comparison table
- Further statistics
- Civilization bonuses
- Team bonuses
- Home City Cards
- Dialogue lines
- Changelog
- Trivia
- History
- Gallery
- Videos
- References/Notes
- External links/See also
- Navbox(es)
- Categories
- Interwiki links
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