User:JoeSmack/sandbox

Page 1
Best to find a well made article and copy it's formatting and everything. It's fine to do, really.



Wikilinks, save real links mostly for external links section (might see templates/info boxes, ignore)
 * Explain Wikilinks, their general incidence
 * Real links tend to be for external links sections (with rare exception), don't lace them into the article

Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Wikipedia. While external links help to embed Wikipedia into the external World Wide Web, internal links (or 'wiki links') bind the project together into an interconnected whole. Links provide instant pathways to locations outside and within the project that are likely to increase our readers' understanding of the topic at hand.

For how many internal links to include, you want to ask yourself, "How likely is it that a reader of this subject may be interested in that other article, or does it cover a concept not fully explained in the article?"

 Lennie and George came to a ranch near ' Soledad ' southeast of ' Salinas, California ' to "work up a stake".

When saved, this produces:

 Lennie and George came to a ranch near Soledad southeast of Salinas, California, to "work up a stake".

If there is an external website that is highly relevant to the article or provides more detail than the article contains, it should be listed in the 'External links' section with a short description. These links should not be used in the article's body text, nor should they used be if they are already in the references or notes.

Encyclopedic tone
 * NPOV
 * Be simple/clear with prose
 * English + everyone else's is fine, just make it consistant

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Layout:

Lead
 * First sentence, paragraph, section

The lead section is the very first part of an article, appearing before any table of contents and headings.. The lead serves both as an introduction to the article and as a summary of the important aspects of its subject.

The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, and the notability of the article's subject should usually be established in the first sentence. The lead should contain no more than four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced if covering material not sourced elsewhere in the article, and should be written in a clear, accessible style to inspire a reading of the full article. As the article progresses the prose can go into more detail for those who need it.

Sections
 * Titles (first letter capped, not too long)
 * Order

Sections and subsections are introduced by headings. Very short or very long sections and subsections in an article look cluttered and inhibit the flow of the prose. These headings clarify articles by breaking up text, organizing content, and populating the table of contents.

Heading 1 (=Heading 1=) is automatically generated as the title of the article. Sections headings start at the second level (==Heading 2==), with subsections at the third level (===Heading 3===), and so on. Sections should be consecutive, such that they do not skip levels from sections to sub-subsections; the exact methodology is deferred to WP:ACCESS.[1] Sections should be separated by a single blank line to avoid too much white space in the article.

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Images
 * Tend to float right, use a caption, start with one or two
 * Provide wikicommons linkage

You should add or replace images only if they are better than the existing ones or add to the article, they are there to support the text of the article.

Images should ideally be spread evenly within the article, and relevant to the sections they are located in. All images should also have an caption explains them. An image that would otherwise overwhelm the available text space on a 800×600 window should be shrunk, displayed as a thumbnail, or formatted as a panorama. It is a good idea to try to maintain visual coherence by aligning the sizes of images and templates on a given page.

Do not stack more images within a section than the text as this causes the images to continue into the next section and bunches up the edit links in some browsers ( standard layout is aimed at a 1024×768 screen resolution).

Citing
 * don't use quotes much if at all
 * use reliable sources damn it, don't sell us your shit jerkface. (there, that feels better).
 * use basic ref tags, more complex provide linkage to harder templates
 * The second half is more of a how to rather than a what style to conform to....could be shortened to 'provide references in the style already used in the article, they should be listed near the bottom of the article' - but this placement could be covered in part on section order...t

Sources should be cited when adding material that is controversial or likely to be challenged, when quoting someone, when adding material to the biography of a living person, and when uploading an image. While you should try to write citations correctly, what matters is that you add your source—provide enough information to identify the source, and others will improve the formatting if needed.

Each article should use the same citation method throughout. If an article already has references, adopt the method in use or seek consensus before changing it. The first thing you do is to create a section where the references will appear. The references section contains either  or , and is placed near the end of the article, below the "See also" section and above the "External links" section. It is usually titled "References". e.g.



The next step is to put a reference in the text. Here is the code to do that. It goes at the end of the relevant phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers, without a space (to prevent separation through line wrap):



Whatever text you put in between these two tags will become visible in the "References" section as your reference. In these reference tags you can place any identifying information; while this is frequently a website's web address it can also be basic specific referencing information about a book, newspaper or journal.

Referencing_for_beginners

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General format
 * Avoid bullet lists
 * When to use italics/bold
 * Dates/time formatting
 * Locations

Because summary probably isn't going to happen...
 * Basic principles of MoS - consistency, stability, clarity and sourced material.
 * Yes a list of odds n ends - nuggets of info would be ok

User:Tony1/Beginners'_guide_to_the_Manual_of_Style, Layout, Writing_better_articles

Nuggets

 * In general follow the style and format of the existing article for language (American vs American English, terminology), layout, referencing style, or seek consensus for changing first.
 * The MOS goes into great detail for a great many cases, but one can often get a quick example of what to do by looking at a Featured article (especially one on a similar subject), as these must conform to all the style rules.