Wikipedia:WikiProject European Union/Style guidelines

The following are guidelines (Manual of Style) established by WikiProject European Union (and hence may extend to WikiProject Europe due to similar membership and nature). These relate to articles within the scope of said project but may be overruled in the following circumstances; where formal Wikipedia policy conflicts with WP:EU guidelines, where there is a substantial consensus among editors for a different approach and where our guidelines conflict with that of another project involved with the page (agreement must be reached among editors on how to compromise).

UK/IRL spelling and grammar
Wikipedia policy supports the use of the style of grammar related to the topic. Due the prevalence of British-Irish English in the EU and Europe, the project prefers to use that style for its pages as opposed to other regional styles, for example American English. This aids with the use of sources from Europe that use this style, our editors who are from Europe and further providing consistency in our articles.

European date format
In the same manner as above, we follow European date formats. This is following Wikipedia policy renouncing auto-formatting (so they are no longer formatted to the user's preference) and removing the date links (see MOS:UNLINKYEARS). The European date format is date month year, as opposed to the US format which swaps the date and month (see example below). Following Wikipedia preferences, we also do not put a comma between the date and month, and the year.

Naming conventions

 * Common names for legislation are to be preferred over official names. Official names of legal acts are very long and would be unfamiliar to most readers. Moreover, while EU legal acts don't contain short titles per se, short forms are frequently used in official documents and acidemic literature. Thus:


 * Notes: Where disambiguation is required the official code can be used: "X Directive (200x/xx/EC)"


 * Avoid beginning articles names with "European Union..." for things which are specific to the EU and where "European Union" is not part of the official name. If disambiguation is required, use appropriate brackets. Thus


 * Notes: By comparison "European Union law" is a perfectly acceptable variation of "Law of the European Union".

Party colours
In the interest of consistency, please use the established party colours for the European Parliamentary parties and groups in maps, tables, legends, etc.