Help:Wiki/Style Guidelines
This Style Guide has the simple purpose of making things easy to read by following a consistent format. The following rules do not claim to be the last word on style. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, the wiki will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit.
In this vein, editors of new and existing articles should strive to have their articles follow these guidelines.
General
Article Titles
If possible, make the title the subject of the first sentence of the article. The title should appear as early as possible in the article — preferably in the first sentence.
The first time the article mentions the title, put it in bold using three apostrophes — '''Article Title''' produces Article Title.
As a general rule, do not put links in:
- the bold reiteration of the title in the article's lead sentence.
- section titles (the only exception being lyrics pages).
Also, try not to put other phrases in bold in the first sentence.
Headings
Use the == (two equal signs) style markup for headings, not the ''' (triple apostrophes) used to make words appear bold in character formatting. Start with "==", add the heading title, then end with "==".
- Avoid links within headings. Instead repeat the word or phrase in the first sentence and wikify there.
- Avoid overuse of subheadings.
- Avoid "The" in headings.
- Avoid repeating the article title in headings.
- If at all possible, avoid changing spelling of section titles, as other articles may link to a specific section.
Capital Letters
Initial capitals and all capitals should not be used for emphasis. Use italics instead by adding the '' (double apostrophes) used to make words appear italic
Italics
Generally italics should be used for the titles of works of literature and art. Therefore they should be used when discussing music in our wiki - that means album, single, song titles etc.
Punctuation
Simply follow the usual rules of English punctuation.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Do not assume that your reader is familiar with the acronym or abbreviation you are using. The standard writing style is to spell out the acronym or abbreviation on the first reference and then show the acronym or abbreviation after it. This signals to readers to look out for it later in the text and makes it easy for them to refer back to it.
Pictures
Articles with a single picture are encouraged to have that picture at the top of the article, right-aligned.
The current image markup language would therefore be this:
[[Image:picture.jpg|120px|right|thumb|caption]]
When uploading a picture be sure to provide as much information about the picture as you can in the summary box.
Captions
Photos and other graphics should have captions unless they are "self-captioning". Captions should not be italicised. The caption always starts with a capital letter.
Remember the full information concerning the image is contained in the image entry, so people looking for more information can click on the photo to see the full details.
Sections
Creation of Sections
Sections are created by creating their headers as follows:
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
Please do not use only one equals sign on a side (=text here=); this causes a title the size of the page name; which is taken care of automatically.
Table of Contents (TOC)
For each article with more than three headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated from the section headings, unless:
- (for a user) preferences are set to turn it off
- (for an article) in the edit box the code __NOTOC__ is added
The TOC is put before the first section header unless it is placed manually with the code __TOC__.
Lead Section
The lead (technically "lede") section is the section before the first body section. It is shown above the table of contents (for pages with more than three headlines). The appropriate lead length depends on the length of the article, but should be no longer than three paragraphs in any case.
The title or subject should almost always be part of the first sentence. If the subject of the article has more than one name, each new form of the name should be in bold on its first appearance. Avoid links in the bold title words.
Body Sections
When a section is a summary of another article, it should have a link before the text (but after the section heading):
{{main|Utada Hikaru}}
Which produces: Template:main
Appendix Sections
Appendix sections (in the preferred order) are:
- Purchase This Release (see Links section below)
- See Also
- Refrences
- Tokyo-Nights Links
- External Links
Categories
You must include category details on new pages for the following:
- Artist Pages - include in category Artists
- Album Pages - include in category Albums
- Single Pages - include in category Singles
- DVD Pages - include in category DVDs
This is important as without your articles will not be included in the category contents pages linked to on the main page.
One of the following should therefore be used for each and added at the end of your article:
[[Category:Artists]]
[[Category:Albums]]
[[Category:Singles]]
[[Category:DVDs]]
Japanese Language
The wiki is an English language encyclopedia of Japanese Music. As such an English loan word or place name with a Japanese origin should be used in its most commonly used English form in the body of an article, even if it is pronounced or spelled differently from the properly romanised Japanese. For example: use Mount Fuji, Tokyo, jujutsu, shogi, instead of Fujisan, Tōkyō, jūjutsu, shōgi.
Romanisation
The Hepburn romanisation system should be used because it is generally accepted by scholars and it gives a fair indication of Japanese pronunciation to the intended audience of English speakers.
Take care with these points:
- Long o and u are written as "oo" and "uu" respectively.
- は, ヘ and を as particles are written wa, e, and o respectively.
- Syllabic n ん is generally written n.
- Syllabic n ん is written n' when followed by a vowel or y but not when followed by another n.
- Article titles should omit apostrophes after syllabic n.
- Article titles should use proper romanizations of long vowels except in cases where a shorter spelling is in common usage in English-speaking countries (e.g., Tokyo, Osaka, Sumo and Shinto, instead of Toukyou, ousaka, Sumou and Shintou).
The original version of Hepburn used m when syllabic n ん is followed by b, m, or p. While generally deprecated, this is still allowed in titles for cases where the official romanisation continues to use m.
Alphabetic Order
Lists of romanised words should be ordered in alphabetic order, A-Z, instead of the common Japanese ordering system which is based on the kana characters. In the case of names, alphabetise by surname, not by given name.
Japanese Terms
Give the romanisation for any name or term written in kanji or kana when the Japanese pronunciation is different from the English pronunciation. Use the pattern:
- English (Japanese characters rōmaji)
Then you can use the English term in the rest of the article.
Template
There is a template (Template:Japanese Romanisation) to help standardise the entries for Japanese terms.
Usage example:
- {{Japanese Romanisation|New Meikai Japanese Dictionary|新明解国語辞典|Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten}}
appears as
- New Meikai Japanese Dictionary (新明解国語辞典Template:call?)
The first entry appears before the brackets, the second is the Japanese term in Kanji and Kana, the last is the reading in Hepburn romanisation. The question mark ? is a link to Help:Japanese Language.
Names
Japanese artists should be referred to by their surname first and then their given name. For example: Utada Hikaru as opposed to Hikaru Utada and Hamasaki Ayumi as opposed to Ayumi Hamasaki.
Where applicable also include their name in kanji and kana in brackets the first time they are mentioned in your article. For example: Utada Hikaru (宇多田ヒカル).
Web Links
Links are to be broken down into 5 categories:
- Purchase This Release - links to a purchasable product on YesAsia's website (see below).
- See Also - wiki links to other articles.
- References - hyperlinks to source information used in your article.
- Jpop Stop! Links - hyperlinks to other sections of Jpop Stop!; for example: the gallery or forums.
- External Links - any other hyperlink pointing away from Jpop Stop!
They should be shown in your article as per the above order.
Jpop Stop! Links
==Jpop Stop! Links==
*[http://[full URL to forum thread] Official Forum Discussion Thread]
*[http://[full URL to gallery] Image Gallery]
This produces the following:
External Links
External links may be added in the same way as above. Please however offer an accurate description of the website name you are linking to.
Page Templates
A number of basic article templates have been created for creting an article for the following types:
- Artists
- Albums
- Singles
- DVD's
You can use these templates by creating your new article from the article creation page.
