Specific article guidelines[]
There is a specific guideline for many of the major article types. Articles for each type should adhere to the guideline.
All article guidelines can be found at Category:Article guidelines.
General article style rules[]
Orthography (written language)[]
The Dragon Quest series has a rather complex localisation history, as the first four games and the seventh game were originally released in American English by Enix. With the transition to Square Enix and the release of Dragon Quest VIII, localisation was given to a British team that, of course, uses Commonwealth English for the majority of text. This also applies to remakes since 2005, though Dragon Quest uses an Early Modern English script in all but the Game Boy Color release.
As a general rule, we will recommend the use of Commonwealth spelling unless a specific game or feature uses another orthography. Thus, "Peregrine Quay" is preferred over "Peregrine Key", and "Iron armour" is preferred over "Iron armor". But a redirect may be left for "Zenithian Armor" to "Zenithian armour" as both were used at different stages -- but the article should still use the British spellings, as they are the most recent. For the differences, see this Wikipedia list.
Basic formatting[]
- Article titles should be singular ("Sword" instead of "Swords").
- Article titles and section headers should follow sentence case instead of Title Case (e.g. "List of alchemy recipes" over "List of Alchemy Recipes").
- Item and monster names do not use inline capitalisation, except when another proper name is also used ("Only the Hero can equip the Armour of Orgo, but a metal king slime can equip the razor-wing boomerang", "Sancho can equip Hela's hammer, the strongest in the game.").
- Use weighted type wisely: bold for the first instance of an article topic or for minor headers; italics for titles of major works and named ships, "quoted titles" for songs, chapters of a book, and short stories. For even better appearance on desktop browsers, we can use the DISPLAYTITLE metafunction as follows:
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Veronica (''Dragon Quest XI'')}}
- which gives us a title with the name of the major work in italics, as it ought to be.
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Other suggestions[]
- "List" articles should start with "List of" as part of the article title.
- When starting a new article, include at least some basic information (no empty stubs!).
- The first paragraph of every article should state which game(s) are related to the article.
- 'The/A/An' should be avoided in article titles except if they are used as part of an official title.
- Write in third person: use "the player" instead of "you".
- Avoid writing abbreviations for game titles ("Dragon Quest VII" instead of "DQVII"). This includes section headers as well, so do not abbreviate in the process of linking to an article. Subtitles may be omitted when a game is better known by its main title, as in Dragon Quest Heroes.
- It is not necessary to write out game subtitles each time you write the game title.
- Follow the official game title naming scheme and use Roman numerals ("III" instead of "3")
- Limit linking to other articles to the first occurrence of the word or phrase unless the article is really long.
- Use active voice rather than passive voice. Active voice means the person performing the action is the subject of the sentence.
- Blatantly incorrect spelling looks awful, and generally is not well-received. Avoid mistakes by using spellcheck and internet references as guides.
- It is encouraged to place {{spoiler|start}} and {{spoiler|end}} around spoilers. This mainly pertains to 'Plot' sections.
Categorising[]
- Articles should be categorised according to their subject matter.
- Category names should be plural. ("Dragon Quest II weapons" instead of "Dragon Quest II weapon")
- Category names should start with a capitalised word, followed by lowercase words ("Final bosses") unless a word is a proper noun ("Dragon Quest II locations").
- Use the lowest level category whenever possible. For example, instead of using [[Category:Enemies]] use [[Category:Dragon Quest II enemies]] which is a subcategory of the enemies category. This makes viewing a category much easier and keeps content well sorted. A list of existing categories can be found at Special:Categories.
Templates[]
- Templates should be used where they are appropriate.
- Modification to existing templates should be kept minimal unless discussed ahead of time.
- New templates are welcome but should be well documented. A user should never have to guess what a template does.
- See existing templates for examples of good documentation: Category:Templates.
Working with media files[]
Adding images[]
The general practice would be to start Image placement on the right side by adding "right" in the image coding as in "[[File:Example.jpg|right]]". The next image would then be placed on the left - "[[File.Example.jpg|left]]", forming a sort-of zigzag pattern.
An image without white/transparent backgrounds should be thumbnailed by adding "thumb" in the image coding as in "[[File:Example.jpg|thumb]]". A caption should be added to thumbnailed images, a short description of what the image is by writing the caption at the end of the code as in "[[File.Example.jpg|right|Caption here]]".
Image galleries should be created when a number of images in a section clutter the layout. Image galleries should also be used with a caption to describe each of the images it contains. To create an image gallery, use the coding below; "perrow" enables one to set how many images on a row, the default and style recommends 4.
<gallery perrow="2/3/4/5"> Example.jpg|Caption here Example.jpg|Caption here Example.jpg|Caption here </gallery>
Embedding video[]
Videos relevant to articles should be placed on a video subpage of the article (/videos). Videos should be add using wikia's video extension on the edit bar. Except for special cases, videos should be left in the normal size assigned by default.