Wikipedia:Tip of the day/December 12

What writing style to use

Wikipedia articles are composed and formatted according to the Manual of Style (MOS). MOS sets the house standard on Wikipedia for attributes like link formatting, capitalization, punctuation, and sections. MOS includes guidelines for biographies, citations, titles, dates and numbers, proper names, and many other stylistic details.

Some examples of the elements of style in the MOS are:


 * Article titles—‌use normal body text capitalization for titles (beginning letter, capitalize proper nouns, etc.), and apply the singular form in titles wherever possible.
 * Capitalization—‌do not capitalize all words in section headings, or non-proper nouns
 * Link placement—‌list external links in their own section at the bottom of an article
 * Punctuation—‌remember the serial comma (Oxford comma) and logical quotes
 * Sections—‌an informative lead section is important. See also a user-written lead creation essay.

To place the MOS template at the right on your User page for easy reference, edit your User page and copy/paste: (including the curly braces).

Please follow the MOS guidelines when you update an article.