Fear and Hunger Wiki:Style guide

See also: Wiki Rules

This page serves as a rule of thumb for wiki formatting to maintain a consistent style across the wiki, and answer editor questions. Looking at similar pages is another effective way to learn how to edit.

Not all pages perfectly follow the style guide. There are numerous pages, so some will inevitably slip through the cracks. Please remedy such cases if you encounter them.

General guidelines

• Be sure to read the page before editing in order to prevent redundant information.
• Keep the scope of the respective article that is being edited in mind. Do not add information that has little to do with its actual topic. Bloated pages makes finding information more difficult.
• Proofread edits to the best of your ability.
• Describe your edits when submitting them so others can easily understand what has changed.
• Large tables should be broken into categories. An "all" category by default (to allow search functions), then the separate categories.

Language

• The wiki leans towards American English. The Fear & Hunger games use a mix of British English and American English, so we generally do not enforce this, however.
• Refrain from using contracted forms (such as don't, there's – use do not, there is instead), colloquialisms, or slang.
  • Terms and dialogue used in the game are exempt from this.
• Ensure a neutral, "encyclopedia" tone.
  • Do not include first or second person perspectives.
  • State concrete facts in articles-- NO SPECULATION, and no opinions or bias should be present.
  • Editor comments should not be visible to readers. The following link explains how editor-only comments can be made: HTML comment. Alternatively put such notes on the talk page or in the edit summary.
    • However, the STUB, REVISE, and Speculation templates are permitted, as they also serve to inform readers of inaccuracies. Please include a reason when adding these templates (achieved by adding a "|(reason)", ex. STUB|Missing Language section).

Capitalization

• All entity names should be capitalized as in-game (e.g. Prison guard, Decrepit Priest), which does not follow consistent rules. Double check what is displayed in game. Groups of entities should be lower-cased (e.g. books, enemies, soundtrack).
• Page titles and section headings should be in sentence case, as long as that does not interfere with the rules above.
• Generally, do not capitalize the word the in mid-sentence: "Throughout the Sewers, ..." instead of "Throughout The Sewers, ...". Exceptions include proper names (e.g. The Heartless One), which may or may not be capitalized: "When fighting The Heartless One, ..." or "When fighting the Heartless One, ..." are both acceptable.

Plural in page titles

• The name of the page should be singular if it is about only one entity.
• It should be plural if it is about a set of entities which are named differently (e.g. Work Benches: there exist a Marble Work Bench and a Martian Work Bench, which are named differently but share a page).
• The name of the page should be singular if it is about a set of entities which have the same name (e.g. Zombie: all Zombie variants share the same name, and all of them share a page).

Formatting guidelines

• The first instance of an entity name on a page should always be linked. This does not apply to the page title (which should be in proper bold instead; see below). Further mentions of the same entity should generally not be linked, though multiple identical links can exist if they occur far from each other and would be helpful to readers-- particularly for long pages.
• The first instance of the page title should be bold. This should usually be in the first sentence of the article. No other instance of the page title should be bold. Bold print should usually be avoided for emphasis on other words.
• Italic print is to be used in the following cases:
  • Emphasis (instead of boldface), though be sure not to overuse emphasis since that diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead.
  • Titles of major works. Note that this includes Fear & Hunger and Fear & Hunger 2: Termina.
  • Foreign words and phrases that are not common in everyday English.
  • Scientific names of organisms (e.g. Liriodendron tulipifera) as described on Wikipedia.

Italics are not to be used for titles of minor works (which are to be enclosed in double quotation marks instead), proper names (such as place names) in other languages, and terms in non-Latin scripts like Japanese.

• Underlining, Template:Nowrap within words, different cTemplate:RedTemplate:Greens within words, ALL CAPS, and small caps styling is to be avoided at all times.
• Straight quotation marks and apostrophes (" and ') should be used instead of curly ones (“ and ’).

Coding guidelines

• The syntax provided by MediaWiki is preferred over HTML, e.g. '''bold''' instead of <b>bold</b> and {| instead of <table>. Nonetheless, in some cases the HTML syntax may be more beneficial for code readability or even necessary to avoid errors, such as in templates.
• Section titles, lists, and indentations should include spaces for readability, i.e.:
  • == Section == instead of ==Section==
  • * bullet point and # enumerated item instead of *bullet point and #enumerated item
  • : indented text instead of :indented text

Section titles should be immediately followed by the section text or the following subsection title, without an empty line in between.

Section titles should always be preceded by an empty line, unless this interferes with the rule above or creates an empty paragraph.

Article format and sections

Different article types require different formats and sections:

• For enemies, see the enemy page format.
• For town NPCs, see the NPC page format.
• For items, see the item page format.
• For locations, see the location page format.

However, the sections below should exist on almost every page. Exceptions do exist, such as Fear & Hunger or Soundtrack F&H2, and listings like Items List F&H2. Other article pages with special guidelines are disambiguations and Guides.

Any section that is not listed here or on the specific page format pages should be given careful consideration. Often, the content of such an inconsistent section fits into one of the consistent, standard sections without problems.

Note that the bullet lists with questions in the following sections are not meant to be exhaustive guides but merely examples.

Intro

This section is located at the very top of the page, above everything else, generally including the table of contents.

This section has no heading. At the very beginning of the page, appropriate banner templates (usually {{{{#rmatch:exclusive|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|exclusive}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, {{{{#rmatch:expert mode only|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|expert mode only}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, {{{{#rmatch:master mode only|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|master mode only}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, {{{{#rmatch:unobtainium|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|unobtainium}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, etc.), followed by one or several infoboxes (usually {{{{#rmatch:item infobox|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|item infobox}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}} or {{{{#rmatch:npc infobox|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|npc infobox}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}), are placed. Below that, above the article text, is the place for redirection and link templates (e.g. {{{{#rmatch:dablink|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|dablink}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, {{{{#rmatch:for|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|for}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, {{{{#rmatch:distinguish|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|distinguish}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, etc.) and finally, certain decorations like {{{{#rmatch:quotation|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|quotation}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}} or {{{{#rmatch:flavor text|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|flavor text}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}.

The first paragraph should contain the article's topic and alternative names in bold when first used. It should serve as a brief summary of the page, or an introduction if a summary is not possible.

Strategy - Enemy pages. Advice on how to survive an encounter. Can be subjective, but refrain from informal writing Lore - Enemy, location, character pages. Narrative details surrounding the subject. No speculation. Location - Enemy pages. when and where an encounter takes place. Interactions - Enemy, character pages. options & results for enemy corpses Personality - Contestant pages. Summarizes character's traits Gameplay traits - contestant pages. Details gameplay characteristics, such as equipment inabilities or differences in starting items or stats. Location & Recruiting - contestant. when and where contestants can be found Gameplay - Location pages. Description of the area. Enemies - location NPCs - location Items - location Music - locations Contents - book pages. State author, the item description, then the exact text below (green). Trivia - Information that serves little or no gameplay purpose. Gallery - Images and GIFs relevant to the page. In-Game Footage - Any videos of gameplay go here. They should be purely demonstrative, and not for entertainment purposes.

The bottom of the page consists of an alphabetically sorted list of interwiki links and, at the very last, {{{{#rmatch:translation projects|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|translation projects}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}, which should always be included in every article.

Files

• For wiki maintenance reasons, all files should be categorized in at least one category. Category:Images is the parent file category.
• Demonstrative GIFs should follow certain guidelines: They should have a high frame rate, bear no distractions, use the default character if necessary, and should concisely convey the entity's functionality. See Help:Creating animated GIFs for details and assistance on how to create GIFs that meet these criteria.
• If possible, do not include texts in image files. Instead, add text on the page where the image is used. This is for easier localization in other languages.

Naming

• Image names should follow the capitalization rules of their respective article. For example, the basic depiction of the Knife is at Knife big.png, that of the Pickelhaube at Pickelhaube big.png.
• If none of the above apply, use a concise but descriptive file name and separate words with spaces: Crafting a Roasted Marshmallow.png, NPC emote interaction.gif.

Templates

• Read the documentation of a template before changing its parameters on a page. The documentation should be available at the template's base page (e.g. Template:Item for {{{{#rmatch:item|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#$1:$4|item}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}), with links to related information if necessary.
  • This applies to infoboxes, especially {{{{#rmatch:item infobox|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|item infobox}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}} and {{{{#rmatch:npc infobox|^#(\s*(\w+?)\s*)(:(.*)$|$)|#[[[:Template:Tl/parser function links]]##$2 $1]:$4|npc infobox}}{{#dplreplace:|/₪/||}}}}.
  • If there is no documentation, the original creator (who can be determined via the page history of the template) should be urged to create one.
• Template documentation usually consists of a short intro, a Usage section, and an Examples section. However, due to the highly varying effects of templates on the Terraria Wiki, this structure is not always sensible.

Categories

• Category pages are not articles. They should not contain more than a few explanatory sentences. If it feels necessary to add information, create a new article and categorize it with the blank sortkey (such as Melee weapons in Category:Melee weapons).
• The blank sortkey is reserved for pages that share the category's name or are in another way very closely related to the category.
• Pages that are related to the category in some way, but are not regular members (perhaps because they deal with a broader, subordinated topic; e.g. Traps in Category:Mechanism items), should get the asterisk sortkey.

Disambiguations

• Disambiguation pages are short pages used for resolving conflicts with ambiguous page titles.

Guides

• Guides can cover a wide array of subject matter, so a single blanket template cannot be applied to all of them. Nevertheless, do see Terraria Wiki:Rules § Guides for guidelines concerning these pages.

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