Marvel Comics Fanon Wiki/Helicarrier/Format

This is a guideline as to how all articles on the mainspace of this wiki ("regular" articles) should be written. Note that pages on other namespaces, such as user pages, can be written differently and are not included in this page.

Layout Guide
This is a guide as to how articles should be organized, which has its own separate page. All material on the Layout Guide should be treated as if they were part of the Manual of Style.

Language
Articles on Marvel Fanon should be written in American English in order to prevent mistranslations. Use of other languages without translation in stories or pages is not allowed unless either translated as well or described in American English. For example, if a character were to say something in Spanish, the correct English translation would have to be written aside the quote, or otherwise use of another language would have to be described in order to prevent reader confusion. For example, "Wolverine mumbled something in Japanese" would be correct if no translation is to be provided. Use of another language in articles is prohibited unless in use by a character in a story and translated.

Capitalization
Capitalization should follow the standard conventions of American English. Do not use capital letters for emphasis (with the exception of when a character is expressing something in a story article); where wording alone cannot provide the emphasis, use italics.

Offices, positions, and job titles are common nouns and therefore start with a capital letter only when followed by a person's name, in other words, when they have become part of the name. When used generically, they should be in lower case. However, if the word refers to a person, it should be in capitals.

There are some ranks the name of which should always be capitalized, no matter the semantics (i.e., “Supreme HYDRA”).

Correct Usage

 * Apocalypse is the first known mutant to have existed, and he amplified himself with Celestial technology and fought the mutant X-Men in Egypt.
 * Notes: Apocalypse is a character name. Celestial and mutant are species names (mutant is a special circumstance), and X-Man is a "job title" and team name. Egypt is the name of a specific location.

Incorrect Usage

 * Apocalypse Is The First Known Mutant To Have Existed, And He Amplified Himself With Celestial Technology And Fought The Mutant X-Men In Egypt.
 * apocalypse is the first known mutant to have existed, and he amplified himself with celestial technology and fought the mutant x-men in egypt.
 * Notes: Only the things noted above in "capitalization" should be capitalized, but they MUST be capitalized, hence why both examples above are incorrect.

Acronyms and abbreviations
When abbreviating, remember to write just the abbreviation; for example, instead of writing "Nick Fury founded the Strategic Hazard International Espionage and Logistics Directorate," one would write "Nick Fury was the founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.. This extends to abbreviations that are as well- or better-known than their full name, such as "DNA."

Like all nouns, acronyms become plural by adding -s or -es at the end. Apostrophes should not be used.

Usage

 * Fury is the founder of the SHIELD.
 * Fury is the founder of the SHIE and LD.

Article titles
Most generally, article titles are based on the subject of the article. There will often be several possible alternative titles for any given article; the choice between them is made by consensus. Remember that article titles must conform to proper word usage guidelines such as capitalization.

When naming an article, please abide the following procedure:


 * Use the "official" name whenever possible. (In a fanfic article, that means that it is the given name for the character that his creator has chosen, or, if the name is not known, then the codename.) If more than one "official" name of the subject is known, use the most full and accurate version of the name.
 * If no "official" name exists, a nickname may be used. It is common for pages to be named something like "Jack Frost (WWII) (Earth-166)" (NOT "Jack Frost (First (or "Good")) (Earth-166)"), but it is usually better for them to have more specific (albeit still conjectural) names).

There is a specific problem for canon (as well as some fanon) articles, which is that often, people may wish to create their own versions of the pages. Normally, that problem can be solved by adding subsections to existing sections to give information about their parallel versions, but sometimes, the subsection is long enough to merit its own article (see Disambiguations).

In those instances, you have permission to create a page of your own. Often, it should not have the same title as the main article to avoid confusion.

Note that the new article should still have a subsection on the main article's "History" section, though it would preferably be summarized to avoid the length problems that a new article is meant to prevent.

Remember, proper capitalization in page titles is important. Although the first letter in an article title is required to be a capital letter by the MediaWiki software, do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise always capitalized.

In general, only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English (such as binoculars). (Note that category names follow different pluralization conventions.)

Except in titles of works (The Darkness Returns, A Chance for Redemption) or in "official" names (The Cavern, The Claw), avoid the definite ("the") and indefinite ("a"/"an") articles at the beginning of a page name. This applies even if the subject of the page is usually preceded by the definite article "the" in speech or writing: Thus, for example, "Webhead" is preferred over "the Webhead;" however, the news show "The Webhead" is fine.

Use the full name of the subject instead of its abbreviation (for example: Strategic Hazard International Espionage and Logistics Division instead of SHIELD).

"Marvel" should not usually be placed before article titles (i.e., Marvel: The Darkness Returns) unless the article is a fictitious Marvel game or film, the title requires the word to "work" (i.e., Marvel Universe).

Some special characters either cannot be used or can but cause problems. For example, you should not use a piping character (|), an asterisk (*), an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]) in a name.

Headings
Most of the above page naming rules apply to headings as well. Try to avoid links within headings.

If a section is too small to cover all information about a topic, you may place a link to a more detailed variant, which can guide readers to articles on that topic. The see also section in character templates may also be used, but remember only to use it sparingly.

Quotes
Quotations may be included in the content if they are less than a paragraph long; if they are a paragraph or more or is a dialogue, then the Quote and Dialogue templates may be used. Please be sure to provide as much information as possible (for instance: source, page if applicable, and characters speaking if applicable).

Redundant internal links should not be added to quotes because they serve little purpose beyond making the quotes appear cluttered and messy. Links should only be added to quotes if they contain a specific article's only mention of a particular concept. Piped links should be avoided as much as possible.

Per standards of American English, double quotation marks (" ") are default on both of the already-mentioned templates and the period (full stop), comma, question and exclamation marks should be within the quotation. Single quotation marks (' ') should only be used when there is a quotation inside a quotation.

Spoilers
The spoiler template may be used if information in an article is from as-yet-unreleased storyline information; for example, future material from a fan fiction story serial.