Abnormality Adventures Wiki:Manual of Style

"You may be looking for Page organization."

This guide details how articles should be formatted and designed. Its purpose is to make sure the wiki's style is consistent, as well as to minimize the need for format, style, or code corrections.

''Note: This manual is still a work in progress. Anything written here is subject to change, and certain exceptions may apply.''

Language

 * This wiki uses Standard American English (center, flavor, color, instead of centre, flavour, colour). There are a few exceptions to this:
 * "Epilogue", "Monologue", "Dialogue" etc. should be preferred over "Epilog", "Monolog", "Dialog"
 * Grey is preferred over gray.
 * Occasionally, there are certain words most English speakers will spell with the -our ending instead of the regular -or ending. This is usually a case-by-case matter. (Example: glamour)
 * When quoting someone, the words they use should always be unchanged, even if this means not following the above rules.
 * In this wiki, the use of the singular "they" is accepted. This is not necessary to be used in most contexts but it is still worthy of note.
 * The reflexive form of the singular "they" used in this wiki is "themself".
 * When making possessive forms of singular and proper nouns ending with s, append 's at the end. Example: The Smiths's House.
 * The serial comma, also known as the "oxford comma", should always be used.
 * Example: Bring John, a dancer, and a clown to the party.
 * When using "long dashes" an em dash (—) is preferred over an en dash (–), and also over a regular dash or minus sign (-).
 * An em dash (—) is preferred over all other dashes when listing a source for a quote, as seen in the Quote template. This should also be done with a space inbetween the source and the em dash.
 * An en dash (–) should be used when using a dash in replacement of the words "to", "from", etc.
 * Good: 1999–2000
 * Bad: 1999-2000
 * Bad: 1999—2000
 * The tense used in the wiki should be the Present tense, unless, of course, one is referring to a dead or no longer existing subject.
 * Under no circumstances should multiple periods ever be grouped together, except in the case of making an ellipsis.
 * Good: WW2 was won by the U.S..
 * Bad: WW2 was won by the U.S.
 * A period should not go inside the quotation marks of a title, nor should any other punctuation that is not actually a part of the title.
 * Good: The first episode of Scarlet-sama's Family is "Day One: The Awakening".
 * Bad: The first episode of Scarlet-sama's Family is "Day One: The Awakening."
 * When quoting something, the period at the end of a quote serves to both end the quote and the sentence.
 * One should only use a single exclamation point and/or question mark. Additionally, exclamation points should always go after question marks (example: "What's this?! I don't look like that!", not "What's this!? I don't look like that!!!"). Also, interrobangs are cool and nerdy, but not standard, so don't use them.

Article Content

 * Articles should be written in an unbiased, encyclopedic tone. Avoid casual, conversational language or styling. Write it like you're writing a school report, or sending a message to your boss. Keep it serious.
 * Don't make things too long. Bigger is not always better. A good example of this is the Appearance section of a character page. This isn't a fashion website, so keep it to a single, relatively short paragraph. All in all, avoid "stretching" the text in order to make it seem more substantial. If there isn't any more information on a topic, just leave it as is. Not every short article is a stub, some things are just too simple to talk about as much as others.
 * The first instance of the name of an article within the article itself should be bolded.
 * Abnormality Adventures, as well as all other large works, such as video games and books, should always be italicized.
 * Episode titles, as well as the titles of other short works, should be in quotes.
 * Galleries should have images centered and have the "add button" hidden, which can be achieved by using " " instead of " ".

Preferred Terminology

 * Although it may seem counter-intuitive, Main Character(s) is preferred over Major Character(s), even though Minor Character(s) is used.


 * "Gender" is preferred in almost all contexts over "sex", mostly because, in the situations where these things are not the same for a given person, the former is more useful, and more respectful.
 * "Gender" refers to a given person's gender identity, which can differ from their biological sex, genitals, etc., but, of course, does not always. Note: If you don't understand what this means, look it up, don't just ignore it. Also, don't just ignore it if you disagree with it. This is not debatable.


 * To expand on this, the usage of "he/she", "him/her", etc., is highly discouraged, as is repeating the name of a person/character/etc. in order to avoid using pronouns at all.


 * All 24 parts of Scarlet-sama's Family may be referred to collectively as "chapters" or "episodes". Additionally, the chapters of the Life Arc may be referred to as "days".


 * Names of entries/chapters/episodes may be reduced to just their subtitles in most situations. The bolded title at the start of an article should always be the full title, and you should never remove the subtitle in order to shorten it.
 * Good: Scarlet-sama's Family is about a reclusive vampire coming out of his shell and starting a new family life.
 * Bad: Scarlet-sama's Family was released on March 20 XXXX.
 * Good: The first time that this recurring joke is made is in "Day One: The Awakening".
 * Good: The first time that this recurring joke is made is in "The Awakening".
 * Bad: The first time that this recurring joke is made is in "Day One".


 * Dates should be written as "Month Day Year" instead of "Day Month Year". Whether or not the "-st", "-nd", or "-rd" suffixes are attached to the day number is unimportant.
 * Good: March 20th, 1997.
 * Good: March 20, 1997.
 * Bad: 20 March, 1997.


 * When using Hivo dates, you should use the form of "D[number], [number] ABV/BBV".
 * Good: D42, 69 ABV
 * Bad: 69 ABV, D42
 * Bad: 69ABV, D42
 * Bad: D42, 69ABV

Images

 * A high quality, low or lossless format is preferred over all others. The most popular of these is .png. Please, please, please, please, do not use .jpg/.jpeg. There is literally no possible reason why you should use .jpg/.jpeg over .png.
 * Please try to give every image file a descriptive name.

Links

 * Don't link to an article within that article itself.
 * Do not put links in section headers.
 * Only hyperlink the base word of something, and leave anything else in plain text (examples: "Clara's ice cream", "...Scarlet lives in a large mansion...").
 * Only link to an article once within the article, unless:
 * One of the links is inside an infobox or a list (the Appearances section of a Character page is a good example of this) and one is in the actual content of the page.
 * The two links link to the same article, but to different sections.

Site rules in regards to article content

 * Hivo dates often line up with Earth dates in ways that don't make intuitive sense. For this reason, there is an acceptable margin of error for what the equivalent of a Hivo date is in the Earth time system, and vice versa, both within the Abnormality Adventures canon and within this wiki.
 * Remember: The word of the creators is the word of God, but Gods aren't perfect. Yes, everything that Omega Fallon or any of the other people working on Abnormality Adventures says is canon, but if a statement they make seems to directly contradict a previously established piece of canon, the word of another creator, or just doesn't make sense for some other reason, politely object to it. They'll most likely be glad to address and clarify the potential contradiction.
 * Unless otherwise stated, the rules of Wikipedia mostly carry over to this wiki.

What you can Reference
Only direct, canon sources are accepted on the Abnormality Adventures Wiki. This includes all canon material, of course, but also any "word of God" statements said by Omega Fallon or any other contributors to the series.

How to Reference
Before worrying about how the references should be formatted, it should be known that things that are somewhat likely to be deleted (tweets, blog posts, etc.) should be ran through a page saving website.

Although there are many methods of doing this, the currently accepted one to use in this wiki is the WayBackMachine. (Videos and Flash Player media sometimes cannot be archived through the WayBackMachine, so archiving a link on YouTube isn't necessary. Downloading it yourself and uploading to Google Drive is an acceptable way to archive, but it is mostly a last resort, and it's OK to not include that in articles.)

Your reference likely won't be changed if you use something else but it's preferred to use that. If you're debating whether or not to run something through it, run it through it. Better safe than sorry.

Please use the templates Cite web and Cite episode for references.

How to Place References
References take the form of a superscript number between two square brackets, placed in the text of an article. References always come after a punctuation mark. However, they should go before brackets, parentheses, dashes (when used as an alternative to parentheses). They should not go before commas.

Examples:
 * Do
 * Abnormality Adventures I: Scarlet-sama's Family was released on XXXX.[1]
 * Abnormality Adventures I: Scarlet-sama's Family (released on XXXX[1]) is a visual novel created by Omega Fallon.[2]
 * Abnormality Adventures I: Scarlet-sama's Family—a visual novel by Omega Fallon[1]— released on XXXX.[2]


 * Do not
 * Scarlet-sama's Family (released on XXXX)[1] is a visual novel by Omega Fallon[2].

Citation needed
Use the template "Citation needed" when a citation is needed. Pretty simple.

When not to use Citation needed: As with References, the Citation needed template comes after punctuation, and before closing parentheses/brackets.
 * If a better citation is needed. In this case, use Better citation needed.
 * If the uncited claim is completely ridiculous or otherwise very unlikely. In this case, just delete it.
 * If there isn't a citation needed (obviously).
 * To be a dick (also obviously).