Help:Manual of Style

At the MechWarrior: Living Legends Wiki we try to assure uniform and quality materials provided to the reader. This Manual of Style provides editors with some basic principles for creating and editing pages.

The English language

Many countries speak and write in English, leading to different forms of spelling for some words. As BattleTech (and by extension MechWarrior) are created by a American company it is most appropriate to write articles using American spelling and grammar. Editors who are familiar with other methods of spelling are not mandated to write articles in 'American' English if they are unfamiliar with it, but the article should be converted to American style by those that do.

Spellings

If a word has two acceptable variants in American English, the one that is considered "more American" should be used. For example, the spelling of armour as armor. The only exception of this rule is the spelling of words ending in -ogue: while dialog is an acceptable version of dialogue, the latter is preferred.

Tense

Articles should be written in present tense, with the exception of subjects which no longer exist (both in mod and outside of it) and the History section which describes the historical events.

Apostrophes and possessives ending in "s"

While plural nouns ending in "s" should be made possessive by adding only an apostrophe, singular nouns ending in "s" can be made possessive by adding either an apostrophe followed by another "s" or simply an apostrophe, providing each article is consistent throughout. Users are encouraged, but not required, to use only an s' for possessive nouns ending in a Z-sound.

Layout guide

When creating or editing articles they should generally be structured as follows, however this is not mandatory:

1. Title
2. Messagebox Templates (eg. {{Out of date}}, {{Stub}}, etc.)
3. Infoboxes (eg. Mech, Vehicle, Map, etc.)
   • For a list of infoboxes see the Infoboxes category. Each infobox has a Usage section explaining how to use them.
4. Introductory sentence or blurb describing the subject of the article in short, simple terms.
5. The main portion of the article describing the subject of the article in detail, usually separated from the Introduction by a ==Heading==.
   • Additional information separated by additional ==Headings== or ===Subheadings===
6. Any history of the subject throughout the various versions of the game.
7. Additional details about the subject in the BattleTech universe.
8. (See Also:) Internal links to related articles.
9. External links (please avoid where possible).
10. Navboxes
11. Categories

Each article should also contain an appropriate image to illustrate the subject where applicable. If article has infobox, the image should be placed inside of it.

What to do, and what to avoid

1. Always assume a good will of other editor
2. Never make personal attacks on another
3. Always be prepared to answer any questions regarding your edits - answer them precisely, one by one.
4. Never avoid discussion about the things you did, especially when asked by Administrators.
5. Never remove content from the articles - improve it instead.
6. Always explain your edits if you change large portions of well-established articles.
7. Always mark edits as minor if they aren't big.
8. Avoid spam edits - make a single, big edit instead of multiple, minor ones.
9. Always keep the articles on topic.
10. Never forget for who this wiki was created - the players, especially those who start the game, so explain subjects for them.

Headings and Sub-headings

Use the == (heading) markup for headings, not the ''' (bold) markup. Example:

==This is a Heading==

===This is a Sub-heading===

If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lower case.
2. Avoid links within headings.
3. Avoid overuse of sub-headings, especially on short articles.

Quotations

Quotations may be included into the articles using the {{Quote}} template, as follows:

{{Quote|"sentence"|Author}}

What will generate:

"sentence"

— Author

Quotes may also contain multiple lines, for example:

{{Quote|Person A: "I told this"<br>
Person B: "And I told that long ago!"|Sample dialogue}}

Person A: "I told this" Person B: "And I told that long ago!"

— Sample dialogue

Units of measurement

For consistency, all in-universe articles should use metric units of weight, mass, length, and other measurements. This follows the practice in most sources of official BattleTech Canon.