This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
Manual of Style (MoS) |
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The Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English Wikipedia articles. This primary page is supported by further detail pages, which are cross-referenced here and listed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Contents. If any contradiction arises, this page always has precedence.[1]
The MoS presents Wikipedia's house style, to help editors write articles with consistent and precise language, layout, and formatting, making Wikipedia easier and more intuitive for users. Plain English works best. Avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording.
Style and formatting should be consistent within an article. Where more than one style is acceptable under MoS, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable.[2] If a style or similar debate becomes intractable, see if a rewrite can make the issue moot.
New content added to this page should directly address a persistently recurring style issue.
Main page: Wikipedia:Article titles |
A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another.
For formatting guidance see the WP:Article titles § Article title format section, noting the following:
((italic title))
near the top of the article. For mixed situations, use e.g. ((DISPLAYTITLE:Interpretations of ''2001: A Space Odyssey''))
instead. Use of italics should conform to WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Italic type.Subject both to the above and to WP:Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly § Punctuation, applies also to the title.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout |
An article should begin with an introductory lead section – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections sections.
. The remainder of the article is typically divided intoInfoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.
If an article has at least four section headings, a navigable table of contents appears automatically, just after the lead.
If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article ((main|Article name))
immediately under the section heading.
As explained in detail in WP:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers, optional appendix and footer sections may appear after the body of the article, in the following order:
Other article elements include disambiguation hatnotes (normally placed at the very top of the article) and infoboxes (usually placed before the lead section).
See also: Help:Section, WP:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Headings, WP:Manual of Style/Layout § Order of article elements, and WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Section headings |
Section headings should follow all of the guidance for article titles (above), and should be presented in sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects).[a]
Use equals signs around a section heading: ==Title==
for a primary section, ===Title===
for a subsection, and so on to ======Title======
, with no level skipped. =Title=
is never used.[d] Spaces around the title are optional and ignored, e.g. == Title ==
.
Section headings should:
<math>
markup.;
") to create pseudo-headings.These restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications, and are not subject to override by local consensus or WP:IAR.
In addition, as a matter of consistent style section headings should:
These are broadly accepted community preferences.
An invisible comment on the same line must be inside the == ==
markup:[e]
==Implications<!--This comment works fine-->==
==<!--This comment works fine-->Implications==
==Implications==<!--This comment causes problems-->
<!--This comment breaks the heading completely-->==Implications==
It is more usual practice to put such comments below the heading.
Before changing a heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to it. If there are many links to the old title, create an anchor with that title to ensure that these still work. Similarly, when linking to a section, leave an invisible comment at the heading of the target section, naming the linking articles, so that if the heading is later altered these can be fixed. Combined example:
== ((subst:Anchor|Consequences|reason=Old section name.))Implications ==
<!--Section linked from [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Dennett]].)-->
which will be saved in the article as:
== <span class="anchor" id="Consequences"></span>
Implications ==
<!--Section linked from [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Dennett]].)-->
The above guidance about sentence case, redundancy, images, and questions also applies to headers of tables (and of table columns and rows). However, table headings can incorporate citations and may begin with, or be, numbers. Unlike page headings, table headers do not automatically generate link anchors. Aside from sentence case in glossaries, the heading advice also applies to the term entries in description lists. If using template-structured glossaries, terms will automatically have link anchors, but will not otherwise. Citations for description-list content go in the term or definition element, as needed.
Sometimes the MoS provides more than one acceptable style, or gives no specific guidance. The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles are [sic] acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."[3]
Edit-warring over style is never acceptable.[2] If the existing style is problematic, discuss it at the article's talk page or if necessary at the MoS talk page. Optional styles should not be "enforced" in a bot-like fashion without prior consensus – doing so will likely be seen as disruptive.[4]
See also: Wikipedia:Article titles § National varieties of English, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling |
The English Wikipedia prefers no national variety of the language over any other. These varieties (for example American English or British English) differ in vocabulary (elevator vs. lift), spelling (center vs. centre), date formatting ("April 13, 2018" vs. "13 April 2018"), and occasionally grammar . (Punctuation is covered in § Punctuation, below.) Articles such as English plurals and Comparison of American and British English provide information about such differences.
For an international encyclopaedia, using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable.
See also Wikipedia:Consistency for additional policies and guidelines on consistency. |
Within a given article the conventions of one particular variety should be followed consistently. Exceptions include:
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Strong national ties to a topic |
An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation. For example:
For topics with strong ties to Commonwealth of Nations countries and other former British territory, use Commonwealth English orthography, largely indistinguishable from British English in encyclopedic writing (excepting Canada, which uses a different orthography).
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Retaining the existing format |
When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change.
When no English variety has been established and discussion does not resolve the issue, use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety. The established variety in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate Varieties of English template on its talk page.
An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. The ((subst:uw-lang))
template may be placed on an editor's talk page to explain this.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters |
Wikipedia article titles and section headings use sentence case, not title case; see WP:Article titles and § Section headings. For capitalization of list items, see § Bulleted and numbered lists. Other points concerning capitalization are summarized below; full information can be found at WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Capitalization of "The" |
Generally, do not capitalize the word the in mid-sentence: throughout the United Kingdom, not throughout The United Kingdom. Conventional exceptions include certain proper names (he visited The Hague) and most titles of creative works (Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings—but be aware that the may not be part of the title itself e.g. Homer composed the Odyssey).
For the in band names,
.
For complete guidance on the handling of titles of works, see (until the material is better consolidated):
|
The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (as detailed at WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Composition titles). The first and last words in an English-language title are always capitalized.
Capitalization in foreign-language titles varies, even over time within the same language; generally, retain the style of the original for modern works, and follow the usage in English-language reliable sources for historical works. Many of these items should also be in italics, or enclosed in quotation marks.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Titles of people |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Calendar items |
For more detail on capitalization, see WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Animals, plants, and other organisms; on italicization, WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Italic face. See also WP:Lead section § Organisms for handling of first sentence. See WP:Naming conventions (fauna) and WP:Naming conventions (flora) for article title guidelines. |
When using taxonomic ("scientific") names, capitalize and italicize the genus: Berberis, Erithacus. (Supergenus and subgenus, when applicable, are treated the same way.) Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: Berberis darwinii, Erithacus rubecula superbus, Acacia coriacea subsp. sericophylla; no exception is made for proper names forming part of scientific names. Higher taxa (order, family, etc.) are capitalized in Latin (Carnivora, Felidae) but not in their English equivalents (carnivorans, felids); they are not italicized in either form, except for viruses, where all names accepted by the ICTV are italicized (Retroviridae).
Cultivar and cultivar group names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized (including the word "Group" in the name); cultivar names appear within single quotes (Malus domestica 'Red Delicious'), while cultivar groups do not (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group).
English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case in article prose (plains zebra, mountain maple, and southwestern red-tailed hawk) and in sentence case at the start of sentences and in other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized.[a] They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: Przewalski's horse, California condor, and fair-maid-of-France. This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: bird of prey, oak, great apes, Bryde's whales, mountain dog, poodle, Van cat, wolfdog. When the common name coincides with a scientific taxon, do not capitalize or italicize, except where addressing the organism taxonomically: A lynx is any of the four medium-sized wild cat species within the genus Lynx. Non-English vernacular names, when relevant to include, are handled like any other foreign-language terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it. Non-English names that have become English-assimilated are treated as English (ayahuasca, okapi).
Standardized breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards.[f] Examples: German Shepherd dog, Russian White goat, Berlin Short-faced Tumbler. As with plant cultivars, this applies whether or not the included noun is a proper name, in contrast to how vernacular names of species are written. However, unlike cultivars, breeds are never put in single quotation marks, and their names are never part of a scientific name. A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standard(s) (rare cases include Norwegian Forest Cat and American Quarter Horse).
Create redirects from alternative capitalization and spelling forms of article titles, and from alternative names, e.g., Adélie Penguin, Adelie penguin, Adelie Penguin and Pygoscelis adeliae should all redirect to Adélie penguin.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Celestial bodies |
See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects) |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Compass points |
Do not capitalize directions such as north, nor their related forms (We took the northern road), except where they are parts of proper names (Great North Road, Great Western Drive, South Pole).
Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status, including informal conventional names (Southern California; the Western Desert), and derived terms for people (e.g., a Southerner as someone from the Southern United States). Do not capitalize descriptive names for regions that have not attained the status of proper names, such as southern Poland.
Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated, depending on the variety of English adopted in the article. Southeast Asia and northwest are more common in American English; but South-East Asia and north-west in British English. In cases such as north–south dialogue and east–west orientation, use an en dash; see § En dashes: other uses.
Main pages: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Institutions, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Capitalization of "The" |
Capitalize names of particular institutions (the founding of the University of Delhi; the history of Stanford University) but not generic words for institutions (the high school is near the university). Do not capitalize the at the start of an institution's name, regardless of the institution's preferred style.
Treat political or geographic units similarly: The city has a population of 55,000; The two towns merged to become the City of Smithville. Do not mimic the style of local newspapers which refer to their municipality as "the City" or "The City"; an exception is the City of London, referred to as the City.
See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) § Modified letters |
Ligatures should be used in languages in which they are standard (hence Moreau's last words were clin d'œil is preferable to Moreau's last words were clin d'oeil) but not in English (encyclopedia or encyclopaedia, not encyclopædia), except in proper names (Æthelstan not Aethelstan).
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations |
Abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases. In strict analysis, they are distinct from contractions, which use an apostrophe (e.g., won't, see § Contractions), and initialisms. An initialism is formed from some or all of the initial letters of words in a phrase. Below, references to abbreviations should be taken to include acronyms, and the term acronym to apply also to initialisms.
When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression:
Do not use capitals in the full version merely because capitals are used in the abbreviation: an early Local Area Network (LAN).
Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as PhD, DNA, USSR) need not be expanded even on first use.
Pluralize acronyms by adding -s or -es: Three CD-ROMs and two BIOSes were released. (Do not use apostrophes to form plurals: Three CD-ROM's and two BIOS's were released.)
An abbreviation may or may not be terminated with a full point (also called a period or stop). A consistent style should be maintained within an article. North American usage is typically to end all abbreviations with a period/point (Dr. Smith of 42 Drummond St.) but in common British and Australian usage, no period/point is used if the abbreviation (contraction) ends in the last letter of the unabbreviated form (Dr Smith of 42 Drummond St) unless confusion could result. This is also common practice in scientific writing. Regardless of punctuation, words that are abbreviated to more than one letter are spaced (op. cit. not op.cit. or opcit). There are some exceptions: PhD for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". In most situations, Wikipedia uses no such punctuation inside acronyms and initialisms: GDP, not G.D.P.
Template:Redirect for
While, in principle, either US or U.S. may be used (with internal consistency) to abbreviate "United States" in any given article, the use or non-use of periods (full points) should also be consistent with other country abbreviations in the same article (thus the US, UK, and USSR, not the U.S., UK, and USSR). In longer abbreviations (three letters or more) that incorporate the country's initials (USN, USAID), do not use periods. When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, U.S. or US may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (France and the United States, not France and the U.S.). Do not use the spaced U. S. or the archaic U.S. of A., except when quoting; and do not use U.S.A. or USA except in a quotation, as part of a proper name (Team USA), or in certain technical or formal uses (e.g., the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes and FIFA country codes).
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Uncertain, incomplete, or approximate dates for examples. |
To indicate approximately, the abbreviation c. (followed by a space and not italicized) is preferred over circa, ca., or approx. The template ((circa))
may be used.
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Units of measurement for when to abbreviate units of measurement. |
Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal. For example, do not use approx. for approximate or approximately, except in a technical passage where the term occurs many times or in an infobox or a data table to reduce width.
Generally avoid devising new abbreviations, especially acronyms (World Union of Billiards is good as a translation of Union Mondiale de Billard, but neither it nor the reduction WUB is used by the organization or by independent sources; use the original name and its official abbreviation, UMB).
If it is necessary to abbreviate in a tight space, such as a column header in a table, use widely recognized abbreviations. For example, for New Zealand gross national product, use NZ and GNP, with a link if the term has not already been written out in the article: NZ GNP. Do not make up initialisms such as NZGNP.
Either the <abbr>
element or the ((abbr))
template can be used for abbreviations and acronyms: <abbr title="World Health Organization">WHO</abbr>
or ((abbr|WHO|World Health Organization))
will generate WHO; hovering over the rendered text causes a tooltip of the long form to pop up.
In normal text and headings, use and instead of the ampersand (&): January 1 and 2, not January 1 & 2. But retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, such as in Up & Down or AT&T. Elsewhere, ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion where space is extremely limited (e.g. tables and infoboxes). Quotations may be cautiously modified, especially for consistency where different editions are quoted, as modern editions of old texts routinely replace ampersands with and (just as they replace other disused glyphs, ligatures, and abbreviations).
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Italic type |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Emphasis |
Italics are used for emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals. But overuse diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead.
Use <em>...</em>
or ((em|...))
for emphasis. This allows user style sheets to handle emphasis in a customized way, and helps reusers and translators.[5]
The vaccine is <em>not</em> a cure.
The vaccine is ((em|not)) a cure.
For complete guidance on the handling of titles of works, see (until the material is better consolidated):
|
Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and paintings). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks. Italics are not used for major religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these titles should also be in title case.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Words as words |
Use italics when mentioning a word or character the term panning is derived from panorama; the most common letter in English is e). When a whole sentence is mentioned, double quotation marks may be used instead, with consistency (The preposition in She sat on the chair is on; or The preposition in "She sat on the chair" is "on"). Quotation marks may also be used for shorter material to avoid confusion, such as when italics are already being heavily used in the page for some other purpose (e.g. many non-English words and phrases). Mentioning (to discuss grammar, wording, punctuation, etc.) is different from quoting (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source). Quotation is done with quotation marks, never italics, nor both at once
or a string of words up to one sentence (A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms: The natural numbers are the integers greater than 0.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign terms |
Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not common in everyday English. However, proper names (such as place names) in other languages are not usually italicized, nor are terms in non-Latin scripts.
Use italics for the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms except viruses at the genus level and below (italicize Panthera leo and Retroviridae, but not Felidae). The hybrid sign is not italicized (Rosa × damascena), nor is the "connecting term" required in three-part botanical names (Rosa gallica subsp. officinalis).
See also: § Quotations |
Don't use italics for quotations. Instead, use quotation marks for short quotations and block quoting for long ones.
Use italics within quotations to reproduce emphasis that exists in the source material. If it is not clear that the source already included italics (or some other styling) for emphasis, add the editorial note [emphasis in original] after the quotation.
If adding emphasis that was not in the original, add the editorial note [emphasis added] after the quotation.
Italicize only the elements of the sentence affected by the emphasis. Do not italicize surrounding punctuation.
For a link to function, any italics markup must be either completely outside the link markup, or in the link's "piped" portion.
He died with [[''Turandot'']] still unfinished.
He died with ''[[Turandot]]'' still unfinished.
The [[USS ''Adder'' (SS-3)]] was a submarine.
The [[USS Adder (SS-3)|USS ''Adder'' (SS-3)]] was a submarine.
See also: Help:Line-break handling and Template:Spaces |
It is sometimes desirable to force a text segment to appear entirely on a single line—that is, to prevent a line break (line wrap) from occurring anywhere within it.
19 kg
or 19((nbsp))kg
.((nowrap))
, ((nobreak))
, or ((nobr))
(all equivalent). Markup: for 5° 24′ N code ((nobr|5° 24′ N))
.It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward. For example:
Whether a non-breaking space is appropriate depends on context: whereas it is appropriate to use 12((nbsp))MB
in prose, it may be counterproductive in a table (where horizontal space is precious) and unnecessary in a short parameter value in an infobox (where a break would never occur anyway).
A line break may occur at a thin space ( 
, or ((thinsp))
), which is sometimes used to correct too-close placement of adjacent characters. To prevent this, consider using ((nobr))
.
Insert non-breaking and thin spaces symbolically (((nbsp))
, ((thinsp))
,
or  
), never by entering them directly into the edit window from the keyboard – they are visually indistinguishable from regular spaces, and later editors will be unable to see what they are. Inside wikilinks, a construction such as [[World War II]]
works as expected, but [[World War((nbsp))II]]
will not work.
See also: § Italics and quotations, § Quotation marks, and Wikipedia:Quotations |
Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style and may be a copyright infringement. It is generally recommended that content be written in Wikipedia editors' own words. Consider paraphrasing quotations into plain and concise text when appropriate (while being aware that close paraphrasing can still violate copyright).
Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced. This is referred to as the principle of minimal change. Where there is good reason to change the wording, enclose changes within square brackets (for example replacing pronouns with nouns that aren't identified in the quote: "Ocyrhoe told [her father] his fate" instead of "Ocyrhoe told him his fate"). If there is a significant error in the original statement, use [''[[sic]]'']
or the template ((sic))
(produces a note like [sic] ) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment (for example, correct basicly to basically and harasssment to harassment), unless the slip is contextually important.
Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted text. Legitimate omissions include extraneous, irrelevant, or parenthetical words, and unintelligible speech (umm, and hmm). Do not omit text where doing so would remove important context or alter the meaning of the text. When a vulgarity or obscenity is quoted, it should appear exactly as it does in the cited source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words by replacing letters with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols, except when faithfully reproducing quoted text that did so. In carrying over such an alteration from a quoted source, [[sic]] or the ((sic))
template may be used to indicate that the transcription is exact.
In direct quotations, retain dialectal and archaic spellings, including capitalization (but not archaic glyphs and ligatures, as detailed below).
See also: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Attributing and specifying biased statements, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch § Expressions of doubt |
Quotation should be used, with attribution, to present emotive opinions that cannot be expressed in Wikipedia's own voice, but never to present cultural norms as simply opinional:
Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can often seem to imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words, like "supposedly" or "so-called", might be inferred.
A quotation is not a facsimile and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud, for example:
((em))
) or, in an already-italic passage, boldface (with ((strong))
). For titles of books, articles, poems, and so forth, add italics or quotation marks following the guidance for titles. Italics can also be added to mark up non-English terms (with the ((lang))
template), for an organism's scientific name, and to indicate a words-as-words usage.((abbr))
template.
However, national varieties should not be changed, as these may involve changes in vocabulary. For example, a quotation from a British source should retain British spelling, even in an article that otherwise uses American spelling.
Direct quotation should not be used to preserve the formatting preferred by an external publisher (especially when the material would otherwise be unchanged), as this tends to have the effect of "scare-quoting":
Italics can be used to mark a particular usage as a term of art (a case of "words as words"), especially when it is unfamiliar or should not be reworded by a non-expert:
When quoting a complete sentence, it is usually recommended to keep the first word capitalized. However, if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (for example, with an introduction such as "X said that"), the original capital letter may be lower-cased.
It is not normally necessary to explicitly note changes in capitalization. However, for more precision, the altered letter may be put inside square brackets: "The" → "[t]he".
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. The source must be named in article text if the quotation is an opinion characterizing it in a biased manner.
. When attributing a quotation, avoidSee § Double or single.
Be conservative when linking within quotations: link only to targets that correspond to the meaning clearly intended by the quote's author. Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after. (If quoting hypertext, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate, to avoid ambiguity as to whether the link was made by the original author.)
Format a long quote (more than about 40 words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, indented on both sides. Block quotations can be enclosed in ((quote))
or <blockquote>...</blockquote>
.
Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the ((cquote))
template). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged.
Use ((quote))
or <blockquote>
only for quotations.
The template also provides parameters for attribution.
Below-quote attributions are not typical in articles. It is more usual to attribute the quotation in an introductory sentence or fragment, ending with a colon and the source citation for it. However, quotation templates that support attribution also have citation parameters for when that format is used. Citations do not go inside block quotations, since they are not part of the quoted material.Line breaks and indentation inside a ((quote))
or <blockquote>
are generally ignored; use <poem>
for poetry, lyrics, and similar material:
<blockquote><poem>
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
</poem></blockquote>
This gives:
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
Or quote such material inline, with line breaks indicated by ((nbsp))/
, and paragraph or stanza breaks by ((nbsp))//
.
Quotations from foreign-language sources should appear with a translation into English, preferably a modern one. Quotations that are translations should be explicitly distinguished from those that are not. Indicate the original source of a translation (if it is available, and not first published within Wikipedia), and the original language (if that is not clear from the context).
If the original, untranslated text is available, provide a reference for it or include it, as appropriate.
When editors themselves translate foreign text into English, care must always be taken to include the original text, in italics (except for non-Latin-based writing systems), and to use actual and (if at all possible) common English words in the translation. Unless you are certain of your competency to translate something, see Wikipedia:Translation for assistance.
<nowiki>...</nowiki>
tags surrounding the apostrophe, or the HTML apostrophe code '
.
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Quotations |
In the material below, the term quotation includes conventional uses of quotation marks such as for titles of songs, chapters, episodes, and so on. Quotation marks are also used in other contexts, such as in cultivar names.
Most quotations take double quotation marks (Bob said: "Jim ate the apple.").[g] Exceptions:
For a quotation within a quotation, use single quotes:
For deeper nesting, alternate single and double:
For quote marks in immediate succession, add a sliver of space by using ((" '))
, ((' "))
, or (as in the example just given) ((" ' "))
:
He announced, "The answer was 'Yes!((' "))
For complete guidance on the handling of titles of works, see (until the material is better consolidated):
|
Quotation marks should be used for the following names and titles:
For example: The song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the band the Beatles.
Do not use quotation marks or italics for:
Many, but not all, of the above items should also be in title case.
"WP:TQ" redirects here. For the Teahouse, a forum for new editors to receive assistance and feedback, see Wikipedia:Teahouse (or WP:THQ). |
See also: Wikipedia:Logical quotation on Wikipedia |
On the English Wikipedia, use the "logical quotation" style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.
Did Darla say, "There I am"?(mark applies to whole sentence)
No, she said, "Where am I?"(mark applies to quoted material only)
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo".
Marlin said: "I need to find Nemo."
If the quoted sentence has been broken up with an editorial insertion, still include the terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.
"I need", said Marlin, "to find Nemo."
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause that should be preceded by a comma, omit the full stop (period) – but other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation mark, may be retained.
Dory said, "Yes, I can read", which gave Marlin an idea.
Dory said, "Yes, I can read!", which gave Marlin an idea.
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, use a comma outside the quotation mark instead of a full stop inside it, but retain any other terminal punctuation, such as question marks.
"Why are you sleeping?", asked Darla.
"Fish are friends, not food", said Bruce.
Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation.
"Fish are friends," said Bruce, "not food."
"Why", asked Darla, "are you sleeping?"
This section applies to both round brackets ( ), often called parentheses, and square brackets [ ].
If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here). However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should usually be preceded by a space. This may not be the case if it is preceded by an opening quotation mark, another opening bracket, or a portion of a word:
There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.
If sets of brackets are nested, use different types for adjacent levels of nesting; for two levels, it is customary to have square brackets appear within round brackets. This is often a sign of excessively convoluted expressions; it is often better to recast, linking the thoughts with commas, semicolons, colons, or dashes.
Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetic phrases in one set separated by commas, or rewrite:
Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning. They serve three main purposes:
Square brackets inside of links must be escaped:
He said, "[[John Doe|John [Doe]]] answered."
|
He said, "John [Doe] answered." |
He said, "[[John Doe|John ((bracket|Doe))]] answered."
|
He said, "John [Doe] answered." |
[https://example.com On the first day [etc.]]
|
|
[https://example.com On the first day ((bracket|etc.))]
|
The <nowiki>
markup can also be used: <nowiki>[Doe]</nowiki>
or <nowiki>[etc.]</nowiki>
.
If a URL itself contains square brackets, the wiki-text should use the URL-encoded form https://example.com/foo.php?query=%5Bxxx%5Dyyy
, rather than ...query=[xxx]yyy
. This will avoid truncation of the link after xxx
.
Use an ellipsis (plural ellipses) if material is omitted in the course of a quotation, unless square brackets are used to gloss the quotation .
...
); do not use the precomposed ellipsis character (…
) or three dots separated by spaces (. . .
)"Alpha, Bravo,((nbsp))... Zulu"
. ? ! : ; , ) ] }
or by a closing quotation mark (single or double), use a non-breaking space before the ellipsis, and no space after it:
Jones wrote, "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully((nbsp))..."
"But what of the other cities? London, Paris((nbsp))...?"
(Place terminal punctuation after an ellipsis only if it is textually important, as is often the case with exclamation marks and question marks but rarely with periods.)He continued to pursue Smith ("...((nbsp))to the ends of the earth", he had sworn) until his own death
.Commas are the most frequently used punctuation marks and can be the most difficult to use well. Some important points regarding their use follow below and at § Semicolons.
Correct: | John Smith, Janet Cooper's son, is a well-known playwright. |
Correct: | Janet Cooper's son John Smith is a well-known playwright. (when Janet has multiple sons) |
Correct: | Janet Cooper's son, John Smith, is a well-known playwright. (when Janet has only one son) |
Incorrect: | John Smith, Janet Cooper's son is a well-known playwright. |
Correct: | Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu), survived for a few months. |
Incorrect: | Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu) survived for a few months. |
Clear: | Schubert's heroes included Mozart, Beethoven, and Joseph and Michael Haydn. |
Awkward: | Mozart was, along with the Haydns, both Joseph and Michael, and also Beethoven, one of Schubert's heroes. |
In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by other punctuation. Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation. In both cases, the last element is treated as parenthetical.
Correct: | He set October 1, 2011, as the deadline for Chattanooga, Oklahoma, to meet his demands. |
Incorrect: | He set October 1, 2011 as the deadline for Chattanooga, Oklahoma to meet his demands. |
Correct: | She said, "Punctuation styles on Wikipedia change too often", and made other complaints. |
Incorrect: | She said, "Punctuation styles on Wikipedia change too often," and made other complaints. |
"MOS:OXFORD" redirects here. For Oxford spelling, see WP:Manual of Style/Spelling § British English with "-ize" (Oxford spelling). |
A serial comma is a comma used immediately before a conjunction (and, or, nor) in a list of three or more items: the phrase ham, chips, and eggs includes a serial comma, while ham, chips and eggs omits it. Editors may use either convention so long as each article is internally consistent; however, there are cases in which either omitting or including the serial comma results in ambiguity:
In such cases of ambiguity, clarify one of three ways:
For the "colon trick" (for linking to a category, image, or interwiki link without adding the page to the category, displaying the image, or adding the interwiki link), see WP:COLON. |
A colon (:) introduces something which demonstrates, explains, or modifies what has come before, or is a list of items that has just been introduced. The items in such a list may be separated by commas; or, if they are more complex and perhaps themselves contain commas, the items should be separated by semicolons.
A colon may also be used to introduce direct speech enclosed within quotation marks .
In most cases a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. There are exceptional cases, such as those where the colon introduces items set off in new lines like the very next colon here. Examples:
Correct: | He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943. |
Incorrect: | The years he attempted it included: 1941 and 1943. (Just remove the colon.) |
Permissible but awkward: | Spanish, Portuguese, French: these, with a few others, are the West Romance languages. |
Except in technical usage (a 3:1 ratio), no sentence should contain multiple colons, no space precedes a colon, and a space (but never a hyphen or dash) follows a colon.
For usage in marking up description (definition) lists, see Help:List § Description lists. |
A semicolon (;) is sometimes an alternative to a full stop (period), enabling related material to be kept in the same sentence; it marks a more decisive division in a sentence than a comma. If the semicolon separates clauses, normally each clause must be independent (meaning that it could stand on its own as a sentence). In many cases, only a comma or only a semicolon will be correct in a given sentence.
Correct: | Though he had been here before, I did not recognize him. |
Incorrect: | Though he had been here before; I did not recognize him. |
Above, "Though he had been here before" cannot stand on its own as a sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause.
Correct: | Oranges are an acidic fruit; bananas are classified as alkaline. |
Incorrect: | Oranges are an acidic fruit, bananas are classified as alkaline. |
This incorrect use of a comma between two independent clauses is known as a comma splice; however, in certain kinds of cases a comma may be used where a semicolon would seem to be called for:
Accepted: | "Life is short, art is long." (two brief clauses in an aphorism; see Ars longa, vita brevis) |
Accepted: | "I have studied it, you have not." (reporting brisk conversation, like this reply of Newton's) |
A sentence may contain several semicolons, especially when the clauses are parallel in construction and meaning; multiple unrelated semicolons are often signs that the sentence should be divided into shorter sentences or otherwise refashioned.
Unwieldy: | Oranges are an acidic fruit; bananas are classified as alkaline; pears are close to neutral; these distinctions are rarely discussed. |
One better way: | Oranges are an acidic fruit, bananas are alkaline, and pears are close to neutral; these distinctions are rarely discussed. |
Semicolons are used in addition to commas to separate items in a listing, when commas alone would result in confusion.
Confusing: | Sales offices are located in Boston, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California, Singapore, and Millbank, London, England. |
Clear: | Sales offices are located in Boston, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Singapore; and Millbank, London, England. |
The meaning of a sentence containing a trailing clause that starts with the word "however" depends on the punctuation preceding that word. A common error is to use the wrong punctuation, thereby changing the meaning to one not intended.
When the word "however" is an adverb meaning "nevertheless", it should be preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma. Example:
It was obvious they could not convert these people; however, they tried. | |
Meaning: | It was obvious they could not convert these people; nevertheless, they tried. |
When the word "however" is a conjunction meaning "in whatever manner", or "regardless of how", it may be preceded by a comma but not by a semicolon, and should not be followed by punctuation. Example:
It was obvious they could not convert these people, however they tried. | |
Meaning: | It was obvious they could not convert these people, regardless of how they tried. |
In the first case, the clause that starts with "however" cannot be swapped with the first clause; in the second case this can be done without change of meaning:
However they tried, it was obvious they could not convert these people. | |
Meaning: | Regardless of how they tried, it was obvious they could not convert these people. |
If the two clauses cannot be swapped, a semicolon is required.
A sentence or clause can also contain the word "however" in the middle, if it is an adverb meaning "although" that could have been placed at the beginning but does not start a new clause in mid-sentence. In this use, the word may be enclosed between commas. Example:
He did not know, however, that the venue had been changed at the last minute. | |
Meaning: | However, he did not know that the venue had been changed at the last minute. |
Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses:
).Incorrect: | 9-mm gap |
Correct: | 9 mm gap (markup: 9 mm gap )
|
Incorrect: | 9 millimetre gap |
Correct: | 9-millimetre gap |
Correct: | 12-hour shift |
Correct: | 12 h shift |
Multi-word hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated modifiers by rewording (a four-CD soundtrack album may be easier to read as a soundtrack album of four CDs). This is particularly important where converted units are involved (the 6-hectare-limit (14.8-acre-limit) rule might be possible as the rule imposing a limit of 6 hectares (14.8 acres), and the ungainly 4.9-mile (7.9 km) -long tributary as simply 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary).
For optional hyphenation of compound points of the compass such as southwest/south-west, see § Compass points.
Do not use a capital letter after a hyphen except for a proper name: Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean-style, but not Gandhi-Like. In titles of published works, follow the capitalization rule for each part independently (resulting in, e.g., The Out-of-Towners), unless reliable sources consistently do otherwise in a particular case (The History of Middle-earth).
Hyphenation rules in other languages may be different. Thus, in French a place name such as Trois-Rivières ("Three Rivers") is hyphenated, when it would not be in English. Follow reliable sources in such cases.
Spacing: A hyphen is never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging sub- and the suffix ‑less.
or when used to display parts of words independently, such as the prefixImage filenames and redirects: Image filenames are not part of the encyclopedic content; they are tools. They are most useful if they can be readily typed, so they always use hyphens instead of dashes. Similarly, article titles with dashes should also have a corresponding redirect from a copy of the title with hyphens: for example, Michelson-Morley experiment redirects to Michelson–Morley experiment.
Non-breaking: A non-breaking hyphen (‑
or ((nbhyph))
) will not be used as a point of line-wrap.
Soft hyphens: Use soft hyphens to mark locations where a word will be broken and hyphenated if necessary at the end of a line of text, usually in very long words or narrow spaces (such as captions, narrow table columns, or text adjacent to a very wide image), for example: ((shy| Penn|syl|va|nia and Mass|a|chu|setts style themselves com|mon|wealths.))
. Use sparingly to avoid making wikitext difficult to read and edit. For more information, see Help:Line-break handling.
Encoding: The hyphen is represented by the ASCII/UNICODE HYPHEN-MINUS character, which is entered by the hyphen or minus key on all standard computer keyboards. Do not use the UNICODE HYPHEN character.
Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles.
"WP:DASH" redirects here. For the overview of Wikipedia discussions, see Wikipedia:Dashboard. |
Two forms of dash are used on Wikipedia: en dash (–) and em dash (—). To enter them, click on them in the CharInsert toolbar to the right of the "Insert" dropdown beneath the edit window (in the Monobook Skin), or enter them manually as –
or —
, respectively. Do not use a double hyphen (--
) to stand in for a dash.
Sources use dashes in varying ways. For consistency and clarity, Wikipedia adopts the following principles.
In article titles, do not use a hyphen (-) as a substitute for an en dash, for example in eye–hand span (since eye does not modify hand). Nonetheless, to aid searching and linking, provide a redirect with hyphens replacing the en dash(es), as in eye-hand span. Similarly, provide category redirects for categories containing dashes.
Dashes are often used to mark divisions within a sentence: in pairs (parenthetical dashes, instead of parentheses or pairs of commas); or singly (perhaps instead of a colon). They may also indicate an abrupt stop or interruption, in reporting quoted speech. In all these cases, use either unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes, with consistency in any one article:
Ideally, use a non-breaking space before the en dash, which prevents the en dash from occurring at the beginning of a line (markup: the ((spaced ndash))
or ((snd))
templates, or use the HTML character entity
):
Another "planet" was detected((snd))but it was later found to be a moon of Saturn.
But do not insert a non-breaking or other space where the en dash should be unspaced
.Dashes can clarify the sentence structure when there are already commas or parentheses, or both.
Use dashes sparingly. More than two in a single sentence makes the structure unclear; it takes time for the reader to see which dashes, if any, form a pair.
The en dash (–) has other roles, beyond its use as a sentence-punctuating dash . It is often analogous to the hyphen , which joins components more strongly than the en dash; or to the slash , which separates alternatives more definitely. Consider the exact meaning when choosing which to use.
An indented em dash may be used before a name or other source when attributing below a block quotation, poem, etc. This dash should not be fully spaced, though it is best for metadata and accessibility reasons to hair-space it from the name with the HTML character code  .[k] Most of Wikipedia's quotation templates with attribution-related parameters already provide this formatting.
For example, ((in5))— Charlotte Brontë will produce:
— Charlotte Brontë
Here the ranges are ranges of numbers, dates, or times. For other ranges, such as ranges of physical locations, see § In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between. |
Do not change hyphens to dashes in filenames, URLs, or templates like ((Bibleverse))
(which formats verse ranges into URLs).
Do not mix en dashes with between or from.
If negative values are involved, an en dash might be confusing. Use words instead.
The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space.
Here, the relationship is thought of as parallel, symmetric, equal, oppositional, or at least involving separate or independent elements. The components may be nouns, adjectives, verbs, or any other independent part of speech. Often if the components are reversed there would be little change of meaning.
Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities.
An en dash between separate nations; for people and things identifying with multiple nationalities, use a hyphen when applied as an adjective or a space as a noun.
A slash or some other alternative may occasionally be better to express a ratio, especially in technical contexts
.Use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound.
Do not use an en dash for hyphenated personal names, even when they are used as adjectives:
Do not use spaces around en dash in any of the compounds above.
Use this punctuation when there are compelling grounds for retaining the construction. For example, from a speech that is simply transcribed and cannot be re-worded; or in a heading where it has been judged most natural as a common name; or for conciseness in a caption or table entry. Otherwise recasting is better.
The en dash in all of the compounds above is unspaced.
Spaced en dashes are sometimes used between parts of list items. For example:
or
Do not use typewriter approximations or other substitutes, such as two hyphens (--), for em or en dashes.
For a negative sign or subtraction operator use U+2212 − MINUS SIGN (−), which can also be generated by clicking on the −
following the ±
in the Insert toolbar beneath the edit window.
Generally, avoid joining two words with a slash, also called a forward slash or solidus ( / ), because it suggests that the words are related without specifying how. Replace with clearer wording.
An example: The parent/instructor must be present at all times. Must both be present? (Then write the parent and the instructor.) Must at least one be present? (Then write the parent or the instructor.) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: the parent-instructor.)
In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash the digital–analog distinction.
is usually preferable to the slash:An unspaced slash may be used:
7/8
), though other techniques are also used, depending on context; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Fractions and ratiosA spaced slash may be used:
To avoid awkward linebreaks, code spaced slashes (and fraction slashes) with a non-breaking space on the left and a normal space on the right, as in: My mama told me / You better shop around
. For short constructions, both spaces should be non-breaking: x / y
.
Do not use the backslash character ( \ ) in place of a slash.
Prefer the division operator ( ÷ ) to slash or fraction slash when representing elementary arithmetic in general text: 10 ÷ 2 = 5. In more advanced mathematical formulas, a vinculum or slash is preferred: or xn/n!.
Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy and also, or alternatively, would be awkward. Instead of Most had trauma and/or smoke inhalation, write simply trauma or smoke inhalation (which would normally be interpreted to imply or both); or, for emphasis or precision or both, write trauma or smoke inhalation or both. Where more than two possibilities are present, instead of x, y, and/or z write one or more of x, y, and z or some or all of x, y, and z.
Avoid using the # symbol (known as the number sign, hash sign, or pound sign) when referring to numbers or rankings. Instead write "number", "No." or "Nos."; do not use the symbol №. For example:
Incorrect: | Her album reached #1 in the UK album charts. |
Correct: | Her album reached number one in the UK album charts. |
Correct: | Her album reached No. 1 in the UK album charts. |
Correct: | Her albums Foo and Bar reached Nos. 1 and 3 respectively. |
An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7. When using the abbreviations, write ((abbr|Vol.|Volume))
, ((abbr|No.|Number))
, or ((abbr|Nos.|Numbers))
.
In normal text, never put a space before a comma, semicolon, colon, period/full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark (even in quoted material; see § Typographic conformity).
Some editors type two spaces after a period/full stop; these are condensed to one when the page is rendered, so what the reader sees is not affected –
.Where a word or phrase that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence, do not add a second terminal punctuation mark. If a quoted phrase or title ends in a question mark or exclamation mark, it may confuse readers as to the nature of the article sentence containing it, and so is usually better reworded to be mid-sentence. Where such a word or phrase occurs mid-sentence, new terminal punctuation (usually a period) must be added at the end.
Incorrect: | Slovak returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985 after growing tired of What Is This?. |
Acceptable: | Slovak returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985 after growing tired of What Is This? |
Better: | Slovak, having grown tired of What Is This?, returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985. |
Incorrect: | He made several films with Sammy Davis Jr.. |
Correct: | He made several films with Sammy Davis Jr. |
See also: Wikipedia:Citing sources |
Ref tags (<ref>...</ref>
) are used to create footnotes (sometimes called endnotes or notes). The ref tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, with no intervening space (except possibly a hair space, generated by ((hsp))). Any punctuation must precede the ref tags. Adjacent ref tags should have no space between them. This applies to all ref tags, including both explanatory notes and citation footnotes.
When ref tags are used, a footnote list must be added, and is usually placed in the Notes and References section near the end of the article in the standard appendices and footers.
Note: The superscript callouts (like this [1]) in the examples below are dummies, and so not clickable. |
Exceptions: Ref tags are placed before dashes, not after. Where a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags belong just before the closing parenthesis.
A sentence that ends with a formula should have terminal punctuation (period, exclamation mark, or question mark) after the formula. Within a sentence, place other punctuation (such as commas or colons) after the formula just as if the text were not a formula. See WP:Manual of Style/Mathematics § Punctuation after formulae.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Chronological items |
For ranges of dates and times, see § En dashes: other uses.
Dates should only be linked when they are germane and topical to the subject, as discussed at WP:Manual of Style/Linking § Chronological items.
Main article: MOS:TIME |
Time of day is normally expressed in figures rather than being spelled out. Use context to determine whether to use the 12- or 24-hour.
Main article: MOS:DATEFORMAT |
Full dates are formatted 10 June 1921 or June 10, 1921; or where the year is omitted, use 10 June or June 10.
Main article: MOS:MONTH |
Main article: MOS:SEASON |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Other periods |
More information on all of the above topics can be found at WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Dates, including the handling of dates expressed in different calendars, and times corresponding to different time zones.
See also: Wikipedia:As of and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch § Relative time references |
The term "current" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text. To help keep information updated use the ((as of))
template.
Incorrect: | He is the current ambassador to ... |
Correct: | As of March 2011, he is the ambassador to ... |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Numbers |
((val|5.8|e=7|u=kg))
.((val|1.534|0.35|e=23|u=m))
. See MOS:NUM § Uncertainty and rounding for other formats.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Currencies and monetary values |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Units of measurement |
((convert))
template is useful for producing such expressions.
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics |
−
.×
or ⋅
. Care should be taken not to confuse the dot operator (in the "Math and logic" section of the edit toolbox) with an interpunct (in the "Insert" section of the edit toolbox) or a bullet. The letter x should not be used to indicate multiplication, but it is used (unspaced) as the substitute for "by" in terms such as 4x4.''a''<sup>''n''</sup>
.-
, the asterisk *
, and either the caret ^
or the double asterisk **
, and scientific notation is replaced by E notation.((math))
template can be used to style formulas in a serif font to help distinguish them from surrounding text. For single variables, ((mvar))
is also available.
For the apostrophe character, see § Apostrophes. |
For thorough treatment of the English possessive, see Apostrophe. |
To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using I, my, we, us, or similar forms: We should note that some critics have argued against our proposal. But some such forms are acceptable in certain figurative uses. For example:
"WP:YOU" redirects here. For "Wikipedia is not about you", see WP:NOTYOU. |
Avoid addressing the reader using you or your, which sets an inappropriate tone
.((Cross reference))
template can be used for this: ((Cross reference|(see [[Chicken]])))
, ((Cross reference|(See [[Dacian language]] for details.)))
It is usually better to rewrite the material to integrate these links contextually rather than use explicit Wikipedia self-references.
See also: English plurals and Collective noun |
For the article title guideline, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals). |
Use the appropriate plural; allow for cases (such as excursus or hanif) in which a word is now listed in major English dictionaries, and normally takes an s or es plural, not its original plural: two excursuses, not two excursus as in Latin; two hanifs, not two hanufa as in Arabic.
Some collective nouns – such as team (and proper names of them), army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party – may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it. In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context. Exceptionally, names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (unless they are being used to refer to a team or company by that name, or when discussing actions of that entity's government). For example, in England are playing Germany tonight, England refers to a football team; but in England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom, it refers to the country. In North American English, these words (and the United States, for historical reasons) are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is when sports teams are referred to by nicknames, plural verbs are commonly used to match e.g. the Heat are playing the Lakers. See also § National varieties of English.
"MOS:PRESENT" redirects here. For the guideline on words such as "currently", "soon", and "recently", see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Statements likely to become outdated. |
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch § Relative time references, and Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Tense in fiction |
By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering products or works that have been discontinued. Articles discussing works of fiction are also written in the present tense
. Generally, do not use past tense except for dead subjects, past events, and subjects that no longer meaningfully exist as such.Tense can be used to distinguish between current and former status of a subject: Dún Aonghasa is the ruin of a prehistoric Irish cliff fort. Its original shape was presumably oval or D-shaped, but parts of the cliff and fort have since collapsed into the sea. (Emphasis added for clarity.)
Avoid the use of contractions in encyclopedic writing; e.g., instead of the informal wasn't or it's, write was not and it is. However, contractions should not be expanded mechanically; sometimes, rewriting the sentence is preferable.
For an essay with suggestions and sample usage, see Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language. |
See also: Wikipedia:Writing about women |
Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision. For example, avoid the generic he. This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works (The Ascent of Man), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (When any student breaks that rule, she loses privileges).
Ships may be referred to using either feminine forms ("she", "her", "hers") or neuter forms ("it", "its"). Either usage is acceptable, but each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so. See WP:Manual of Style/Military history § Pronouns.
Avoid words and phrases that give the impression of straining for formality, that are unnecessarily regional, or that are not widely accepted. See List of English words with disputed usage and Wikipedia:List of commonly misused English words; see also § Identity.
"MOS:NOTE" redirects here. For footnotes, see Help:Footnotes. For hatnotes, see Wikipedia:Hatnote. For musical notes, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music § Images and notation. |
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch § Editorializing, and Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Information style and tone |
Avoid such phrases as remember that and note that, which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional. They are a subtle form of Wikipedia self-reference, "breaking the fourth wall". Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not tell readers that something is ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, etc. Simply state the sourced facts and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: Note that this was naturally subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. becomes This was subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers.
Avoid rhetorical questions, especially in headings. Use a heading of Active listening and text such as The term active listening, coined in ..., not What is active listening?.
A neutral cross-reference is permissible – e.g., – but is usually better recast as a sentence with a link – )Bulverism, also known as the psychogenetic fallacy, is a related logic flaw.
A subset term identifies a set of members of a larger class. Common subset terms are including, among, and et cetera (etc.). Avoid redundant subset terms (e.g., mis-constructions like: Among the most well-known members of the fraternity are included two members of the Onassis family; or The elements in stars include hydrogen, helium, etc.). The word including does not introduce a complete list; instead, use comprising, consisting of, or composed of.
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies § Child named for parent or predecessor, and Wikipedia:Verifiability § Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves |
When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by reliable sources. If it isn't clear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses.
Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by Wikipedia content policies, such as those on verifiability, and neutral point of view (and article titles when the term appears in the title of an article).
Use specific terminology. For example, it is often more appropriate for people or things from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) to be described as Ethiopian, not carelessly (with the risk of stereotyping) as African.
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Gender identity, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography § Changed names, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch § Neologisms and new compounds |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign terms |
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Other languages, Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (regional), and Help:Interlanguage links |
Foreign words should be used sparingly.
Where possible, non-English should be marked up using the appropriate ISO language code, e.g. ((lang|es|casa))
. There are alternatives to the ((lang))
template which also provide additional information about a foreign word or phrase, such as a link to the language name; .
Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not current in English. See WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign terms for details. The ((lang))
template and related templates automatically italicize text, so do not add separate italics markup around or within them.
Loanwords and borrowed phrases that have common usage in English – Gestapo, samurai, vice versa – do not require italics. A rule of thumb is to not italicize words that appear unitalicized in general-purpose English-language dictionaries.
See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) § Modified letters, Wikipedia:Romanization, and Category:Romanization |
Names not originally written in one of the Latin-script alphabets (written for example in Greek, Cyrillic, or Chinese scripts) must be given a romanized form for use in English. Use a systematically transliterated or otherwise romanized name (Aleksandr Tymoczko, Wang Yanhong); but if there is a common English form of the name (Tchaikovsky, Chiang Kai-shek), use that form instead.
The use of diacritics (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines . Provide redirects from alternative forms that use or exclude diacritics.
Spell a name consistently in the title and the text of an article. See relevant policy at WP:Article titles; see also WP:Naming conventions (use English). For foreign names, phrases, and words generally, adopt the spellings most commonly used in English-language references for the article, unless those spellings are idiosyncratic or obsolete. If a foreign term does not appear in the article's references, adopt the spelling most commonly used in other verifiable reliable sources (for example other English-language dictionaries and encyclopedias). For punctuation of compounded forms, see relevant guidelines in § Punctuation.
Sometimes the usage will be influenced by other guidelines, such as § National varieties of English, which may lead to different choices in different articles.
"Wikipedia:Jargon" redirects here. For an explanation of jargon used on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Glossary. |
See also: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not § Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal; and Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable |
Some topics are intrinsically technical, but editors should try to make them understandable to as many readers as possible. Minimize jargon, or at least explain it or tag it using ((Technical))
or ((Technical-statement))
for other editors to fix. For unavoidably technical articles, a separate introductory article (like Introduction to general relativity) may be the best solution. Avoid excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations such as the one in this sentence. Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do. When the notions named by jargon are too complex to explain concisely in a few parenthetical words, write one level down. For example, consider adding a brief background section with ((main))
tags pointing to the full treatment article(s) of the prerequisite notions; this approach is practical only when the prerequisite concepts are central to the exposition of the article's main topic and when such prerequisites are not too numerous. Short articles like stubs generally do not have such sections.
Places should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of their article
. Exceptions are made if there is a widely accepted historical English name appropriate to the given context. In cases where such a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in round brackets (parentheses) on the first occurrence of the name in applicable sections of the article. This resembles linking; it should not be done to the detriment of style. On the other hand, it is probably better to provide such a variant too often than too rarely. If more than one historical name is applicable for a given context, the other names should be added after the modern English name, that is: "historical name (modern name, other historical names)".
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images |
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Images, Wikipedia:Image use policy, and Wikipedia:Picture tutorial |
==Heading==
delimited by two equal signs, or at the top of the lead section. Do not place images immediately above section headings.|alt=
text takes the image's place for those who are unable to see the image. See WP:ALT.
See also: Wikipedia:Videos |
Other media files include video and audio files. Style recommendations for such files largely follow recommendations for image files (as far as applicable).
Textual information should almost always be entered as text rather than as an image. True text can be colored and adjusted with CSS tags and templates, but text in images cannot be. Images are not searchable, are slower to download, and are unlikely to be read as text by devices for the visually impaired. Any important textual information in an image should also appear in the image's alt text, caption, or other nearby text.
For entering textual information as audio, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions |
Photographs and other graphics should have captions, unless they are unambiguous depictions of the subject of the article or when they are "self-captioning" images (such as reproductions of album or book covers). In a biography article no caption is necessary for a portrait of the subject pictured alone, but one might be used to give the year, the subject's age, or other circumstances of the portrait along with the name of the subject.
Main pages: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists |
Further information: Help:List |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking |
See also: Help:Link |
Make links only where they are relevant and helpful in the context: Excessive use of hyperlinks can be distracting and may slow the reader down. Redundant links (like the one in the tallest people on Earth) clutter the page and make future maintenance harder. High-value links that are worth pursuing should stand out clearly.
Linking to sections: A hash sign (#
) followed by the appropriate heading will lead to a relevant part of a page. For example, [[Apostrophe#Use in non-English names]]
links to a particular section of the article Apostrophe.
Initial capitalization: Wikipedia's MediaWiki software does not require that wikilinks begin with an upper-case character. Only capitalize the first letter where this is naturally called for, or when specifically referring to the linked article by its name: Snakes are often venomous, but lizards only rarely .
Check links: Ensure that the destination is the intended one; many dictionary words lead to disambiguation pages and not to complete or well-chosen articles.
Main page: Wikipedia:External links |
External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, articles can include an External links section at the end, pointing to further information outside Wikipedia as distinct from citing sources. The standard format is a primary heading, ==External links==
, followed by a bulleted list of links. Identify the link and briefly indicate its relevance to the article. For example:
* [https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/history/index.html History of NIH]
* [https://nih.gov/ National Institutes of Health homepage]
These will appear as:
Where appropriate, use external link templates such as ((Official website))
and ((URL))
.
Add external links with discretion; Wikipedia is not a link repository.
Other things being equal, keep markup simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly.
In general, wikitext formatting is considered easier to use than HTML and wikitext is preferred if there are equivalents; see Help:HTML in wikitext. Obsolete elements and attributes should be updated or removed. There are many templates that allow HTML markup to be used without putting it in articles directly, such as ((em)) (see MOS:EMPHASIS) and ((strong)) (see MOS:BOLD).
An HTML character entity is sometimes better than the equivalent Unicode character, which may be difficult to identify in edit mode; for example, Α
is explicit whereas Α
(the upper-case form of Greek α
) may be misidentified as the Latin A
.
Modifications in font size, blank space, and color style sheet, and should be reserved for special cases only.
are an issue for the Wikipedia site-wideTypically, the use of custom font styles will:
Outside article text, different font sizes are routinely used in navigation templates and infoboxes, tables (especially in larger ones), and some other contexts where alternatives are not available (such as table captions). Specify font sizes relatively (for example with font-size: 85%
) rather than absolutely (like font-size: 8pt
).
Do not use color alone to mark differences in text: they may be invisible to people with color blindness and useless in black-and-white printouts or displays.
Choose colors that are distinguishable by readers with the commonest form of colorblindness, such as maroon and teal; and additionally mark the differences with change of font or some other means (maroon and alternative font face, teal). Avoid low contrast between text and background colors. Viewing the page with Toptal can help with the choice of colors. See also color coding.
Even for readers with unimpaired color vision, excessive background shading of table entries impedes readability and recognition of Wikilinks. Background color should be used only as a supplementary visual cue, and should be subtle (consider using lighter, less-dominant pastel hues) rather than glaring.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Indentation |
Do not abuse block quotation markup to indent non-quotations. Various templates are available for indentation, including ((block indent))
, and (for inline use) ((in5))
.
Avoid :
(description list markup) for simple visual indentation in articles (common as it may be on talk pages). It causes accessibility problems and outputs invalid HTML.
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Users with limited CSS or JavaScript support |
Scrolling lists, and collapsible templates that toggle text display between hide and show, can interfere with readers' ability to access our content. Such mechanisms are not to be used to conceal "spoiler" information. Templates are not normally used to store article text at all, as it interferes with editors' ability to find and edit it.
When such features are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS, and to the 45% (and climbing) of Wikipedia readers who use the mobile version of the site,[n] which has a limited set of features. Mobile ability to access the content in question is easy to test with the "Mobile view" link at the bottom of each page.[o]
Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading. This includes reference lists, tables and lists of article content, image galleries, and image captions. In particular, while some templates support a collapsible
parameter or manually-added CSS class, and this is permissible, the collapsed
, mw-collapsed
, and autocollapse
states should not be used in articles to pre-emptively force the closure of these elements, except as noted below. Any information hidden in this way when the page loads will be irreversibly invisible to the aforementioned classes of users, as well as a growing number of low-bandwidth users in Asia who reach a Wikipedia article via Google.[p] Several other CSS classes, used manually or by templates, will render content inaccessible to mobile users.[q]
Collapsed or auto-collapsing cells or sections may be used with tables if it simply repeats information covered in the main text (or is purely supplementary, e.g. several past years of statistics in collapsed tables for comparison with a table of uncollapsed current stats). Auto-collapsing is often a feature of navboxes. A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details. If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all. If the information is important and the concern is article density or length, consider dividing the article into more sections, integrating unnecessarily list-formatted information into the article prose, or splitting the article.
"WP:COMMENT" redirects here. For the expression of personal opinions in articles, see WP:COMMENTARY. |
For invisible control characters, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Private Use Area and invisible formatting characters. |
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Hidden text |
Editors use "invisible" comments – not shown in the rendered page seen by readers of the article, but visible in the wiki source when an editor opens the article for editing – to communicate with one another.
Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, although where existing consensus is against making such an edit, they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that. Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors. Check that your invisible comment does not change the formatting, for example by introducing unwanted white space in the rendered page.
To leave an invisible comment, enclose the text you intend to be read only by editors between <!--
and -->
. For example:
<!-- If you change this section title, also change the links to it on the pages .... -->
<!-- When adding table entries, remember to update the total given in the text. -->
This notation can be inserted with a single click in wiki markup, just under the edit pane in edit mode.
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation |
Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In most situations, for ease of understanding by the majority of readers and across variants of the language, quite broad IPA transcriptions are best for English pronunciations. See Help:IPA/English and Help:IPA (general) for keys, and ((IPA))
for templates that link to these keys. For English pronunciations, pronunciation respellings may be used in addition to the IPA.
Template:Wikipedia books
For the major parts of the Manual of Style, see the sidebar at top right of this page (visible only in desktop view, not in mobile view) |
(Links to policy and guidelines on specific questions)
== ==
but on the same line may cause the section-editing link to fail to appear at all; in other browsers, it may appear, but using it will cause the section heading to not automatically be added to the edit summary.
en.wikipedia.org
in the address bar to en.m.wikipedia.org
and loading that version of the URL. Note also that viewing the normal "desktop" version of the website on a mobile device is not viewing the mobile version of the site, though (depending on mobile browser and what transcoding it is doing) this may be a worthwhile test for some broader accessibility matters, especially on tablets, which do not always use the mobile version of Wikipedia.
ambox
, navbox
, vertical-navbox
, topicon
, metadata
, nomobile
, collapsed
, mw-collapsed
, and (when triggered) autocollapse
.
[…] the content of a b element may not always be bold, and that of an i element may not always be italic.
Wikipedians are encouraged to familiarize themselves with modern editions of other guides to style and usage, which may cover details not included here. Those that have most influenced the Wikipedia Manual of Style are:
For additional reference works, see notable entries at style guide and Dictionary § Major English dictionaries.