User:Aemony/Sandbox/Editing guide/Article formatting

Letter case for headers and page names

All headers and page names should use sentence case. In sentence case, the first letter of the sentence is capitalized. The rest of the letters are lowercase except for proper nouns, acronyms, and Roman numerals.

Game titles are proper nouns and should generally be written in title case following the Chicago Manual of Style rules.
Acronyms should generally be written in all caps. Police Quest: SWAT is written as such because "SWAT" is an acronym for "Special Weapons And Tactics".
Roman numerals should generally be written in all caps, such as Final Fantasy VII.
Legal symbols such as "™" and "®" should be omitted from titles.
Note that "all caps" is generally not a stylization that should be preserved. Although Fight Knight is stylized as FIGHT KNIGHT by its developer, PCGW writes it in title case.

These guidelines may be overridden to preserve the stylization of a game title; e.g., eFootball 2022 instead of the title case Efootball 2022. However this requires the use of the DISPLAYTITLE magic word and is generally frowned upon. Please discuss with the Staff before applying such a display title override.

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In addition to the above guidelines, page names are also expected to follow these:

Page names are generally available on a first come, first serve basis.
- If a game already occupies a name on the wiki, any later pages should have an appropriate identifier added to the end of its page name.
- An exception can be made when insignificant indie games, e.g. shovelware titles on Steam, occupies the name shared with a later, but more, prominent game. The less signficiant game should then be moved to a name with an appropriate identifier is added while the more prominent game is moved to the main name.
- If there is a conflict where a later version of the same game occupies the name without an identifier, while the original game itself is using an identifier, evaluate a potential swap of the names so that the original game has the main name, and any later versions make use of identifiers.
Potential identifiers that may be used to differentiate between pages:
- Edition/version name, e.g. Doom I Enhanced or Doom 3: BFG Edition.
- Engine, e.g. Biohazard 2 (Sourcenext).
- Developer, e.g. Quake (Nightdive).
- Emulated platform (for emulated games), e.g. Golden Axe (Mega Drive).
- If no other identifier is available, the release year can be used as the fallback, e.g. Prey (2017).
{{Disambig}} or {{Distinguish}} should be added to the top of pages to note any other relevant pages with the same or similar name.

Staff members can in rare cases make or allow for exceptions to the guidelines.

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Spelling

Spell checking before submitting is a good idea, especially for readers whose first language is not English and may rely on translating articles or for those who use screen-readers. All major browsers and text editors included spell checking functionality built-in.

Common English spelling mistakes

Mistake	Explanation
Then / than	Then — used in reference to time. Than — used in comparison.
Neither or	There are two combinations: Either... or and Neither... nor!
It's / Its	It's = it is. Its = The thing the belongs to it. Same as his or hers.
Their there they're	Their = The thing that belongs to them. There = They happened to be there. They're = They are.
Who's / Whose	Who's = Who is. As in "Who's with me?!" Whose, as in "I will have to fix the car whose engine I ruined"
Thru	Correct spelling is Through.
Affect / Effect	Affect — mostly used as a verb. As in "Sound affects perception" Effect — mostly used as a noun. As in "The effect of increasing volume"
Axis / Axes	The plural form of axis is axes.

Grammar and punctuation

Proper grammar and punctuation will help make text on the wiki far easier to read. It will also help cut down on time spent editing fixes in the future. There are countless guides online for English grammar, but here are some places to start:

English Grammar Guide (Edufind.com) - General guide.
Guide to Grammar and Writing - Another general guide.
How To Use An Apostrophe (The Oatmeal) - Visual guide on using apostrophes properly.
How to use a semicolon (The Oatmeal) - Visual guide on using semicolons properly.
When to use i.e. in a sentence (The Oatmeal) - Visual guide on using "i.e." and "e.g." properly.
How and why to use whom in a sentence (The Oatmeal) - Visual guide on using "whom" and "who" properly.

Time and dates

Avoid using relative expressions such as recently, lately, currently, to date, soon or now. Although not as strict and timeless as encyclopedia entries, PCGamingWiki articles are intended to last and stay relevant, while relative constructions get out of date and lose their meaning as time passes.

A construction like As of the latest game update may become inaccurate after another update, but As of the January 1, 2020 game update will always retain its meaning and remain attributed to a specific update.

Names

Names of both games and operating systems should be written out in full. Not only does this increase clarity, but it also allows for wiki articles to be more prevalent in search results. For example, Windows XP should be written out in full, never as WinXP or other variants.

Files and file paths

All files and file paths should be encased with a {{code| <text here> }} or <code> </code> tag.

Examples (with {{code| <text here> }})

This is the preferred tag format to use in the wiki

DedServer.exe
<path-to-game>\System\config.ini

Examples (with <code> </code>)

This tag variant should only be used if there are issues with the previous format

setup.exe
<path-to-game>\Bin\Game.exe

Keyboard keys and shortcuts

To properly display keyboard keys, use the Key tag: {{Key| Key 1 | Key 2 | Key 3}}

For keyboard shortcuts, separate each key with |. The tag supports up to 10 keys in a single combination.

Note that all keyboard keys and shortcuts refer to a QWERTY US keyboard layout. Keys and shortcuts may vary with other layouts.

Examples

A
Alt+↵ Enter
Ctrl+Alt+Delete

Units

All units should be written down correctly for consistency and clarity.

Bad:1ghz
Good: 1 GHz

It is important to note that units follow defined international standards. All numbers require a space before the units. Units written out in full must be all in lower case, not in sentence case and not with numbers.

For a paragraph describing technical details about CPUs, the frequency would be written out as megahertz or gigahertz, not Megahertz and not GigaHertz.

"The "clock rate" of a central processing unit, CPUs, is measured in hertz, typically megahertz and gigahertz. For example, some CPUs have a clock rate of 700 MHz or 4.2 GHz."

Also make sure the correct units are used for sizes! The units for size are: b, bit; B, Byte. The latter is the one that is most likely to be used and it is eight times bigger than the former.

For Frames per second (FPS), they are provided as whole numbers. If a number is a decimal, round up to the nearest whole value (ex. 60.57 FPS becomes 61 FPS).

Linking

Formal documentation on wiki-style hyperlinks can be found on Wikipedia

Hyperlinks are used to link to external sites. Depending on the type of link, different linking styles would be required. The table below covers all the major styles used:

Hyperlink style table

Link type	Syntax	Example URL	Link example	Example source
Regular link	[<url> <hyperlink text>]	https://www.gog.com/	GOG.com	[https://www.gog.com/ GOG.com]
Internal link (to another wiki article)	[[<article name>]]	https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Half-Life (Refer to page title for proper text)	Half-Life	[[Half-Life]]
Internal link (to another section in current article)	[[#<section title>\|<hyperlink text>]]	https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:Editing_guide/Article_formatting#Units (Refer to section title for proper text)	The Units guidelines	[[#Units\|The Units guidelines]]
Wikipedia link	[[w\|<page title>]] or [[Wikipedia:<page title>\|<hyperlink text>]]	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCGamingWiki	PCGamingWiki or A link to PCGamingWiki	[[w\|PCGamingWiki]] or [[Wikipedia:PCGamingWiki\|A link to PCGamingWiki]]
User Link	{{u\|<user name>\|<forum ID>}}	https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/User:Andytizer	Andytizer (t c f)	{{u\|Andytizer\|1-andytizer}}
Template link	{{t\|<template name>}}	https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Template:T	{{t}}	{{t\|t}}

Source

It is preferred that links given are to actual pages, rather than direct download links.

Ex. If there is a mod of a certain game, link to the information page of the mod, such as a forum thread or a code repository site (like GitHub), instead of a direct download link. Direct download links might contain malicious files and as such should not be linked to on this wiki.

When creating a link, try to provide some context. Never simply link text as only 'Source' or 'here', try to say 'Comment from Rock Paper Shotgun'.

As a side note, any link pointing towards the PCGamingWiki Files database should never be superseded without good reason. If a file is out of date, non-functional, or malware-infected, please contact a mod via PM or the wiki's Discord server.

Other wikis and resources

It is encouraged by the wiki to link to other regularly updated sources of information. For example, Widescreen Gaming Forum or DOSBoxWiki. Including huge amounts of duplicate information should be avoided. However, there are many cases where the wiki can add more information about a title. For example, what are the differences between a GOG and a DOSBox version of a game?

Editing guide