Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about counties

At the WikiProject UK geography, we believe the counties of the United Kingdom are important subjects. In order to facilitate the development of these subdivisions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the following guidance has been put together.

In the United Kingdom, the meaning of "county" can be confusing. There are several types of official administrative area that are described as counties due to historical modifications of the borders, and because the extent of the "administrative county boundaries" are often not exactly the same as the ceremonial and ancient county boundaries by of the same name; the counties of England and Wales have undergone vast geographic transformation in the last few centuries; the counties of Scotland were officially abolished but their territory (in some cases) exist with a ceremonial role; likewise the counties of Northern Ireland have no administrative role, but are used for geographic demarcation and lieutenancy.

In respect of England, Scotland and Wales, a fundamental part of this guide is to reaffirm the long established position that we do not take the view that the historic/ancient/traditional counties still exist with the former boundaries. Unless (using consensus) a good reason is made not to, the article should describe any administrative and ceremonial changes differences within one article, including any difference in the statistics between them. In England and Wales, where the historic county boundaries are different to modern boundaries the article should discuss these differences, and not be split into new "Historic county of Exampleshire" articles.

Where counties have been abolished or no longer serve any municipal role (such as Middlesex or Ross-shire) these should have their own articles, but maintain that they no longer function as contemporary counties/subdivisions of territory.

Guidance
As mentioned, there are several types of official administrative area that are described as counties. They differ from each other in significant ways; some have a county council, some are dominated by conurbations, others no longer function with any administrative, municipal or statistical role. Systems also differ between the United Kingdom's home nations. As such, the guidance is split according to type of county.

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Optional extra sections

 * Notable people – two or three paragraphs mentioning some of the notable current and former residents of the county and what they are notable for. This should preferably be prose, not a list.  An alternative to this section is spread information about notable people throughout the article in other sections: historical figures in History, politicians in Politics, artists in Culture, etc.
 * Culture – theatre, fine art, music, dance, architecture, food originating from the county, festivals, carnivals, etc

Additional sub-pages

 * The county should come with a page List of places in Exampleshire which lists all of the settlements in the county, and in a separate section lists places of interest, such as tourist attractions. The list may additionally include a section listing other sub-divisions, such as districts and parliamentary constituencies). These pages should not be used for counties with no contemporary municipal, administrative or statistical role (i.e. former counties).
 * The county should come with a page at WikiMedia Commons containing media (e.g. photographs, diagrams) relating to the county. This is linked with commons in the external links section.

Dos and Don'ts

 * Per WP:TRIVIA, do not use a "trivia", "miscellaneous" or "other facts" section.
 * Per WP:LIST, avoid using lists wherever possible (particularly for "notable people" or "subdivisions"), consider using tables, diagrams or prose.
 * Per WP:DATE and WP:CONTEXT, do not link standalone years. Only link full dates or dates with a day and a month. The same applies to dates in the footnotes.
 * Avoid describing named-areas that are verifiably part of a wider settlement as "districts" or "suburbs", unless citation supports this. Whilst these two terms have common usages, they also indicate a specific and technical geographic term to which an area may not actually conform.
 * Per WP:EL and WP:SPAM, be reluctant to add external links unless they are essential, and always restrict them to the "External links" section, or to within an appropriately tagged reference.

Grammar and layout checklist

 * The lead needs to adequately summarize the content of the article.
 * There should not be anything in the lead not mentioned in the rest of the article.
 * Only make wikilinks that are relevant to the context. Common words do not need wikilinking.
 * A word only needs to be wikilinked once within each section.
 * It is not recommended to specify the size of images. The sizes should be what readers have specified in their user preferences.
 * Text should not be sandwiched between two adjacent images.
 * All fair-use images need a fair use rationale.
 * Image captions should not end with a full-stop if the caption does not form a complete sentence.
 * Book references need the author, publisher, publishing date and page number.
 * Web references need the author, publisher, publishing date, access date, language (if not English) and format (if a PDF file).
 * Blogs and personal websites are not reliable sources.
 * Inline citations belong immediately after punctuation marks.
 * Each "notable resident" needs a reference.
 * Portal links belong in the "see also" section.
 * "Further info" links belong at the top of sections.
 * Include lists only if they cannot be made into prose or their own article.
 * Lists within prose should be avoided.
 * Unspaced en dashes are used for ranges. Unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes are used for punctuation. The same applies to dashes in the footnotes. See WP:MOS.
 * " " (non-breaking space) should be typed between numbers and units.
 * Imperial measurements should be accompanied by the metric equivalent in brackets, and vice versa. If possible, use a conversion template, e.g. 5 mi.
 * Whole numbers under ten should be spelled out as words, except when in lists, tables or infoboxes.
 * Sentences should not start with a numeral. Either recast the sentence or spell the number out.
 * Usually, only the first word in a section heading needs a capital letter.
 * Short sections and paragraphs are discouraged.
 * The words "current", "recent" & "to date" should be avoided as they become outdated.
 * Ampersands should not be used, except when in a name, e.g., Marks & Spencer.
 * Southeast is one word (and may or may not be hyphenated). This does not apply when it is the name of an area, e.g. South East England.
 * In longer sentences, a comma may be needed before "and", "due to", "such as", "including", "as", "because" or "but".
 * "Past few years" has a different meaning to "last few years".
 * "Within" has a different meaning to "in".
 * Full-stops are needed after each initial in someone's name.
 * Hyphens should not be placed after words ending in ly, e.g. widely-used phrase (except if the ly word could also describe the noun, e.g. friendly-looking man)
 * Do not use contractions, such as "can't" and "they're".
 * "While" should only be used when emphasising that two events occur at the same time, or when emphasising contrast. It should not be used as an additive link.
 * Using "with" as an additive link can lead to wordy and awkward prose, e.g. the town has ten councillors, with one being the district mayor → the town has ten councillors; one is the district mayor
 * Beginning a sentence with "there", when it does not stand for anything, leads to wordy prose, e.g. There are ten houses in the village → The village has ten houses. The same applies to "it".
 * Avoid weasel words, such as "it is believed that", "is widely regarded as", "some have claimed".
 * Avoid peacock terms, such as "beautiful", "famous", "popular", "well-known", "significant", "important" and "obvious".
 * Avoid informal or words, such as "carry out" and "pub".
 * Avoid overly-formal or archaic words, such as "circa", "utilise", "whilst", "upon", "commence" and "prior".
 * Avoid wordy terms, such as "the majority of" and "a number of".
 * Avoid vague words, such as "various", "many", "several", "long" and "almost"
 * Avoid phrases with redundant words, such as "is located in", "the two are both", "they brought along", "they have plans to", "they were all part of", "the last ones to form", "both the towns", "outside of the town", "all of the towns", "received some donations", "still exists today", "it also includes others", "many different towns", "available records show" and "in the year 2007".

English ceremonial county infobox images

 * Infoboxes may contain image collages, but they should consist of no more than four images in no more than three rows. These limits may be exceeded only if there is a compelling reason to do so, subject to local consensus. The images should be captioned beneath the collage.


 * The images selected for the collage should represent the county thematically, for example by including prominent cultural, historic, or natural landmarks. It is desirable for at least one major settlement to be represented. Images should be carefully selected to ensure they are legible at small size, and where possible they should form a coherent whole.

Note: this guidance should also apply to Wales.
 * The example is taken from Devon. It shows two natural features, a landmark in a major city, and a distinctive breed of pony, therefore giving an overview of the county. The images are arranged so that they can be seen clearly and their colours complement each other.

Local authorities
When a council becomes a unitary authority like Somerset Council but keeps the same boundaries it should be covered in a single article even if like Buckinghamshire Council the council was abolished and reformed with the same boundaries. If like Dorset County Council/Dorset Council (UK) there were boundary changes it should be considered on a case by case basis if separate articles should exist with the default to having separate articles. Factors that may also be taken into account if separate articles are needed or not as well as the difference in boundaries include the time gap between abolishment and formation, if one council was a 2 tier and the other was a unitary and if the names of the councils are identical of merely similar. When a council like Lancashire County Council was reformed in 1974 (1973 in Northern Ireland and 1975 in Scotland) with the same name it should not be split into separate articles for pre 1974 and post 1974. This applies even if there were boundary changes.