User:BadCatMan/Manual of Style

This Manual of Style is a style guide offering helpful tips for writing, formatting, and organizing articles on the Forgotten Realms Wiki, to promote a consistent style that suits wiki policies.

These guidelines are based on standard wiki style and on habits developed by FRW editors to suit the Forgotten Realms setting and the wiki's goals. Some are set by our Policies, while others are not mandatory but are commonly used. An editor might not use some of these on an article, but should be aware that another editor will eventually apply it.

See Wikipedia's Manual of Style for more detailed guidelines. Ask User:BadCatMan for clarifications and advice.

But some articles…
No, some existing articles don't employ these styles. These articles were mostly written before these policies and habits were developed or enforced, while others slipped through the net later. This does not mean bad habits they show are okay. We just have quite a backlog to get through. We hope to eventually bring all these articles up to a consistent style and good quality. If you see any, try fixing it up yourself.

In-universe
An in-universe article is one about the fictional lore of the Forgotten Realms or another setting and the Dungeons & Dragons game. A common fan term for this is "fluff" (as opposed to the "crunch" of rules and statistics; see Crunch, below, for how to handle this). This includes characters, creatures, places and areas, events and history, spells, items, and even classes. An in-universe article shouldn't mention crunch, novels, sourcebooks, and so on. These are obtrusive; coming across these breaks the reader's suspension of disbelief, reminding them that they are not reading about a world, but about a book or game. See Help:Citing sources for how to cite a novel in an unobtrusive way, through footnoted references.

Perspective
Write articles from an in-universe perspective, that is, the point-of-view (POV) of someone in the setting. That person can't see the novel something was written in, they can't see the game rules, or the level of a character. So don't mention these things. That person, being essentially the reader, is otherwise omniscient, however; they know everything else that went on. But, because of our past tense policy, below, all these things occurred in the past. If it helps, consider yourself as a sage living centuries in the future of the setting, after everything has changed, collecting and compiling all these records of the past.

That said, you should also write from the third-person point-of-view. For example, "she did this". There's no need to go into character with a first-person POV ("I saw this") or address the reader or player with a second-person POV ("You see this").

Tense
Owing to our Remove Wiki from Timeline policy, all in-universe articles must be written in past tense. So, not "Elminster slays the dragon and flies to Cormyr" (present tense), but "Elminster slayed the dragon and flew to Cormyr" (past tense). In the first case, both events seem to happen at once, which doesn't make sense. Some users employ an odd conditional-future tense with 'would', as in "Elminster would slay the dragon and would fly to Cormyr" but this sounds even stranger, suggesting Elminster only planned these things, but did not necessarily do them. Only the past tense makes it clear that these things actually happened in the story: "Elminster slayed the dragon then flew to Cormyr" is clearest and simplest. Saying "Ravens Bluff was a city in the Vast" does not mean it has been destroyed in the latest edition (it hasn't), only that it was a city then and was a city up to when we last heard of it.

As an exception, the present tense is used in articles about individual years, following the custom of chronologies presented in the sourcebooks and on Wikipedia. For example, from -286 DR, "The Xothol arcane college is closed." and "Wulgreth of Netheril settles in the ruins of Karse." The present tense can also be used when referring to real-world topics, e.g., "the rapier is a sword with a thin pointed blade", as this is a real item currently existing in our world. It can also be used when information is unknown, e.g., "The outcome of this battle is unknown", meaning it is unknown to the article writer or reader, but may be known to characters in the setting. This should be used with discretion. The main body of the article and in-universe lore should still be in past tense.

Other tenses can still be used for more complex events: "Elminster would have slayed the dragon, but it was immune to his magic." (a conditional future tense for events that were planned) and "Smuggling had been going until 1375 DR when paladins put a stop to it." (the past perfect continuous tense, for events that took place for some period of time until some point in the past). This is just normal grammar.

Introduction
Begin the article with a short introduction to quickly tell the reader what it's about, to give context to the article and let them know if it's something they want to read about. Try to answer the who, what, when, where, and sometimes why of the topic. Try to interest the reader in it.

For example, let's look at Susztam Mar-Shinn. The first line tells us:

"Susztam Mar-Shinn was a male drow illusionist and shadow adept. He was the Head Student of the Inverted Tower and a user of the Shadow Weave in Szith Morcane in the 14th century."

First thing, it tells us who or what the article is about, which is also the name of the article. This is bolded for emphasis (put three apostrophes on either side of the name, as in name ). This is a standard style for wikis. This should usually go first, but some topics with no proper name may require a different phrasing. If the topic has multiple names, they can also be bolded (but try to space them out a bit).

Second, it tells us what he is: his gender, race, classes, and occupation. You can be a bit cute with this: it's basically the beginnings of a character sheet or NPC statblock. That's fine; this is D&D after all. (We don't usually do alignment, which might be a step too far toward crunch.) For a building, say if it's an inn or castle or even both; for a settlement, say if it's a village, town, or city; and so on.

Third, it gives context, the where and when. He lives in Szith Morcane; one might go further and say it's a drow outpost in the Deep Wastes of the Underdark. He also lived in the 14th century, at least. Use your judgement on the date; drow are long-lived, so Susztam may spend most part of the century in this role at the tower. In fact, he was in the post from 1354 DR to at least 1372 DR, so one could also say "mid–14th century", "mid-1300s", or "from 1354 DR onwards". Shorter lived or more transitory characters might be given a single year. Cities and nations last centuries and might not need a date. Mountains and oceans certainly don't.

Fourth, it tells us why he might be important. He's a head student at the Inverted Tower, he's a practitioner of the Shadow Weave, which is of minor importance. Small-scale topics and short articles usually don't need any more detail. Major topics and very long articles (such as those that become Feature Articles) can have lengthier discussions of why the subject is important, even summaries of the article as a whole.

Sections
Rather than a big wall-of-text that's hard to follow, break your article up into sections, each covering a separate aspect. Each of the infobox templates and "Help:Writing an article about…" pages will present a set of example, commonly used section headings. For example, Person and Help:Writing an article about a person. We'll use this as an example, but other types of articles work the same way.

In general, an article about a Person could have the following:

Rumors and legends
Not all are required; if a minor character's appearance is unknown, then a Description section is not needed and may be left out. (Note we say "Description" rather than "Appearance", which is a section in the Appendix; see below.) Sections may be renamed if something else is more suitable to what appears: "Relationships" to "Alliances" or "Family", for example. The order may also be changed; History often explains some aspect of a character or place, so it may be worthwhile putting its first, unless it may spoil a character's death, so you may feel History should go last. You might put Relationships first, to introduce the other people in the history. Think about how the article should be organized, and the story you want to tell about the topic.

Very small articles, those with only a few sentences, generally don't need sections. After all, it would look odd and unbalanced if there was section than text on the page.

You can create a section by placing two equals signs, ==, on either side of the heading. For example, ==History==. You can make a subsection with three equals signs, such as ===Ancient history===. More equals signs produces smaller sub-subsection headings. Subsections are for breaking a large section into smaller parts focusing on individual aspects of the topic.

The custom on the Forgotten Realms Wiki is to use "sentence case" for section headings. That is, only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized in a section heading, while other words were kept in lower case. For example, "Ancient history", "Rumors and legends", "Tressym found in Cormyr", and "External links".