Wikipedia:WikiProject Contract bridge/Manual of Style/Appendix 4: Deal diagram examples

Several templates are available to display full and partial deals; instructions on usage can be found on their associated discussion page. Suit combination play may also be illustrated by templates.

Cards of higher rank are to the left of those of lower rank. When one hand has a void in a suit, it is denoted by an em dash (&mdash;) for greater clarity. Smaller cards whose exact value is unimportant may be designated with an "x".

Spacing
Spacing can imrove the appearance of templates in certain cases, especially where long suits are displayed.
 * hair spacing
 * thin spacing
 * normal non-breaking spacing

Single hands, inline
The template BridgeHandInline produces a single hand result such as: North holds for use inline with text. The template has 'no-wrap' parameters which prevents mid-suit line-breaks and keeps at least two suits on the same line.

The addition of spacing between the ranks of cards results in the following:
 * - with no spacing
 * - with hair spacing
 * - with thin spacing
 * - with normal non-breaking spacing

Full deals
The template BridgeHandNWES shows all four hands of a deal. The diagram is drawn with North at the top, with the other hands following their normal geographic orientation. For the reader's convenience, in most diagrams South is declarer, so that the reader can see the hand as if playing it; exceptions to this rule can occur when reporting deals from actual matches, but even then the players' seats are often rotated to follow this convention.

Details of the hand may be given in the upper left quadrant and the lead situation given in the lower left quadrant.

Thin spacing (using ) between card ranks is recommended but occasionally, when long suits are encountered, hair spacing (using  ) may be more effective in preventing a two-line rendering of a suit.

An auction table may supplement the hand diagram.

See Template:BridgeHandNWES for more template instructions.

Partial deals
Several templates return partial deals omitting one or more of the hands; thin spacing between cards in the same suit is recommended.

Suit combinations
BridgeSuitNS produces a suit combination for declarer and dummy, generally used to illustrate a line of play; thin spacing between cards in the same suit is recommended.

BridgeSuit produces holdings in a suit by all four players, centered in the page.

Alternatively, BridgeSuitLeft produces holdings in a suit by all four players, left justified in the page.