Final Fantasy XIV Wiki:Style manual

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Style Manual This style manual describes rules and guidelines for creating and editing wiki pages. It's strongly recommended that editors follow these guidelines in order to maintain consistency across the wiki regarding writing style, general wiki code markup and template usage.

Note: This page is under construction and will change over time. General writing style These sections should provide a loose understanding of what is considered an ideal writing style. For editing help, please consult the information provided here. Voice Maintaining an objective writing style (avoiding "I", "We", "You") is encouraged. Using CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis is strongly discouraged. Using capital letters for every word in a sentence is discouraged; Writing Like This Only Applies To In-Game Names/Descriptions Such As Quest Titles, Actions, Or Item Titles. Limit bold words. In most cases there is a precedent set for what can be bolded. Language that needs to be emphasized should never be bold but can be italicized (This includes single words and short phrases). Language Omit needless words; don't use 5 words when 3 will do. Good example: Using enmity-increasing actions will prevent mobs from aggroing on other players. Bad example: Whenever actions which increase enmity are used the aggro from other players will go off them. Reserve ultimatums/absolutes for actual 100% cases; avoid "always, never, best, worst"; choose "almost always, almost never, close to best, close to worst": Good Example: A very rare item to drop. Bad Example: Extremely close to impossible item to drop. Pattern Maintain structure. It is up to you to notice the implied structure/pattern when editing a page. Good example #1: Quest infobox - Infobox with main quest information. Quest objectives - Objectives text. Quest journal - Journal entry text. Notes - Additional notes, if any. Bad example #1: Quest objectives - Objectives text. Repeated information from infobox. Quest journal - Journal text along with walkthrough tips. Quest infobox - Infobox with main quest information. Templates This section deals with specific template usage by type. Please note that templates are a very volatile part of the wiki and will change over time to accommodate the game structure as it evolves. General Templates in general share some simple rules: They provide some parameters that you can pass, and these parameters are formatted before displaying. Parameters may also be used to annotate information through SMW, and to generate categories. Parameters are passed within a template call and between pipes (|). There are two types of parameter: named – it has an explicit name and value separated by an equal sign (=) such as {{Greenify text|text=Hello}}, and unnamed – it assumes each value passed between pipes (|) to be a parameter such as {{Greenify texts|Hello|Greenify|All|Text}}. Each template should have its own page with examples on how to use it. Infoboxes Infoboxes are templates which displays a concise, pretty-formatted infobox to the side of the page with various information regarding a certain subject; they are intended to be at the start of the page. Note that not all data regarding a subject should be in the infobox because they're meant to cover common, small information, not every single detail. If the infobox doesn't contain some information then it should be discussed with the community/moderators if that piece of information should belong to the infobox; in most cases, information with a lot of text should be placed within a section. Important! Always make it so that the page name matches the subject's corresponding image name, and make sure the extension is properly used. For example, if you're using an NPC infobox, it will default the image to the page name plus ".jpg" (jpg extension), while an action or trait infobox will default to page name plus ".png" (png extension). Read the template documentation to understand what parameters are required/expected. In case the subject name/title follows the default page name, and the page name contains disambiguation details (eg. parentheses in case of multiple actions with the same name for different classes/jobs), do provide the name/title parameter so the wiki knows how to save the correct, canonical name, instead of the page name. For example: Standard Touch (alchemist), Standard Touch (culinarian) and Standard Touch (armorer). Available infoboxes: {{Action infobox}} – Adds an active action infobox to the page; note that it doesn't cover traits. {{Trait infobox}} – Adds a trait infobox to the page. {{Quest infobox}} – Adds a quest infobox to the page. {{NPC infobox}} – Adds an NPC infobox to the page; covers both friendly NPCs and hostile creatures. {{Area infobox}} – Adds an area infobox to the page; covers landmasses, regions, zones and landmarks. {{Item infobox}} – Adds an item infobox to the page.