Nookipedia:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style outlines the acceptable practices governing article construction on Nookipedia, ensuring consistent language, layout and formatting. As it assumes some prior knowledge of basic Wikicode, beginners should consult the Intro to Wikicode or Help:Wikitext for more information.

This page covers standard practices relating to basic article organization and language use. For guidance on non-stylistic topics please check the relevant links at the bottom of this page or browse Help:Contents.

Article titles, headings, and sections
All articles and headings should use sentence case, where only the initial letter of the first word and proper nouns are capitalized (for more information refer to the capitalization section). Please make note of the following rules and exceptions:
 * Article titles and headings should only begin with a noun or noun phrase. (Blue Series not The Blue Series, exception: The Roost)
 * The final character should not be punctuation unless it is part of a name. (e.g. DJ K.K. or Go K.K. Rider!)

Section organization
An article should begin with a concise summary of the article. The article title should appear in the first sentence of the introduction in bold. The only elements which may precede the introduction are disambiguation hatnotes, headers (e.g. Template:Villager Header), and infoboxes. Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned. The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections.

If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article, insert  immediately under the section heading. Optional appendix and footer sections may appear after the body of the article, in the following order:


 * Gallery of images related to article content.
 * Trivia, or miscellaneous facts that do not fit anywhere else in the article body.
 * Internal links to related Nookipedia articles (section heading "See also").
 * Notes and references (section heading "References"; see Help:Citing sources).
 * Relevant websites that have not been used as sources (section heading "External links").
 * Internal links organized into navigational boxes.
 * Categories.

Section headings
Use equals signs around a section heading:  for a primary section,   for a subsection, and so on to , with no level skipped. is never used. Spaces around the title are optional and ignored, e.g..

Section headings should:


 * Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place.
 * Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
 * Not contain images or icons.
 * Not contain citations or footnotes.
 * Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g. Preferences not Peanut's preferences.
 * Not be numbered or lettered as an outline.
 * Not be phrased as a question.

Invisible comments should be placed below the heading, not on the same line.

Capitalization
All articles and headings should use sentence case, where only the initial letter of the first word and proper nouns are capitalized (exception: amiibo).

All subjects coming from official Nintendo sources (e.g. the games) should capitalized exactly as they are in the source material (i.e. not all in-game subjects are proper nouns). If capitalization for the same subject differs between a game and another official source, the in-game capitalization should be used.

The English-language titles of compositions (books, songs, films, paintings etc.) are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (e.g. articles or prepositions). The first and last words in an English-language title are always capitalized.

Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter (June, Monday; the Fourth of July). Seasons are in lower case (e.g. last summer, winter solstice), except in proper names. Do not capitalize directions such as north, nor their related forms (e.g. northern).

Italics
Nookipedia uses italics when referencing all works (exception: acronyms like WW, CF, NL etc.). There are several link templates which make this process easier, for more information see:Help:Templates. Italics should also be used:


 * For emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals.
 * For the titles of works (e.g. books, films, games, music albums, and paintings).
 * When referring to a word or character or a string of words (e.g. the term panning is derived from panorama).
 * For phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not common in everyday English.
 * For the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms.

Dates and time
The term "current" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text (e.g. As of June 2016...).
 * Times should be in the twelve-hour clock format and written as follows: 11:15 AM and 2:30 PM. Include a non-breaking space between the number and "AM" or "PM".
 * Times at the beginning of an hour should be written as a single number (e.g. 5 PM, not 5:00 PM), except when in a time range with a non-beginning of an hour time (e.g. 5:00 PM – 5:30 PM).
 * Times in time ranges should be separated by an en-dash with surrounding spaces when used in tables and infoboxes, and by "to" when used in prose.
 * Full dates are formatted June 10, 1921; or where the year is omitted, use June 10.
 * For month and year, write June 1921, with no comma.
 * Abbreviations for months, such as Feb, are used only where space is extremely limited. Such abbreviations should use three letters only, and should not be followed by a period (full point) except at the end of a sentence.

Grammar and usage
To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using I, my, we, us, or similar forms. Avoid addressing the reader using you or your, which sets an inappropriate tone. Use a noun (e.g. the reader or the player), the pronoun one (e.g. one's own town), or use the passive voice (e.g. a town name is then chosen).

By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, do not use past tense except for dead subjects, past events, and subjects that no longer meaningfully exist as such.

Spelling and romanization
Standard grammatical and spelling conventions of American English should be followed when editing articles. Names not originally written in one of the Latin-script alphabets (e.g. Japanese or Chinese scripts) must be given a romanized form for use in English. These standards are based on a proposal by User:Ok in February 2019 at the The Roost.

Rōmaji Standard

 * Consonants and short vowels are represented identically to their representations in Modified Hepburn.
 * As a consequence, （ん、ン）is always n, not m, and is followed by an apostrophe (') before an a-row kana (a vowel) or a ya-row kana (one beginning with a "y" sound), including イェ.
 * The sokuon (っ、ッ) is not represented at all at the end of a word.
 * Long vowels spelled with an a-row kana after a kana of the same grade (ie, spelled with two of the same vowel in a row), or spelled with a chouonpu (ー), are all represented with a macron over the vowel (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō).
 * ～ is treated as a chouonpu.
 * Other long vowels are represented with vowel sequences, as if they were sequences of the short vowels that they are spelled with in kana. (ex. おう -> ou, えい -> ei)
 * Small kana which are not part of a standard digraph are treated as their large variants.
 * Changing between hiragana and katakana, as well as other word boundaries, are represented by a space (ex. Ribbot's catchphrase だロボ -> da robo). All particles, such as が, を, よ, ね, and だ, are treated as separate words, unless they begin with ん or っ, in which case they should be written together with the word they follow.
 * An i-grade kana followed by small ィ for all cases except for イィ, is romanized as "ī" instead of "yi".

Japanese Name Standard

 * Japanese names of characters should be indicated in their infoboxes using the JN template. The first parameter is the Japanese name as it appears in the game, and the second is the rōmaji for that name.
 * If a character's Japanese name has a standard spelling in the Latin alphabet, then that should be used as the third parameter.
 * When referring to a Japanese name in the text of an article, one should use the Latin spelling if there is one, unless it is specifically the pronunciation that is being discussed, and otherwise use the rōmaji.

Images

 * Each image should be inside the level 2 section to which it relates, within the section defined by the most recent  delimited by two equal signs, or at the top of the lead section. Do not place images immediately above section headings.
 * Avoid sandwiching text horizontally between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar.
 * Avoid referring to images as being to the left, the right, above or below, because image placement varies with platform, and is meaningless to people using screen readers; instead, use captions to identify images.
 * An image's |alt= text takes the image's place for those who are unable to see the image.

Captions

 * Captions normally start with a capital letter.
 * Most captions are not complete sentences but merely sentence fragments that should not end with a period. However, if any complete sentence occurs in a caption, then every sentence and every sentence fragment in that caption should end with a period.
 * The text of captions should not be specially formatted, except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text (e.g., italics for the Latin name of a species).
 * Captions should be succinct; more information can be included on its description page, or in the main text.

Links
Make links only where they are relevant and helpful in the context: Excessive use of hyperlinks can be distracting and may slow the reader down. A hash sign (#) followed by the appropriate heading will lead to a relevant part of a page. Add external links with discretion; Nookipedia is not a link repository.