Style guide

This article is about stylistic and typographic choices. For help how to realise them, see Category:Help.

Overview

The default style guide for the Empire wiki is to use the guide provided for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has been around for a very long time and the style guide conventions that exist there have a lot of thought put into them designed to keep a wiki clean and make it easy to extend.

Obviously the Wikipedia style guide is very long and relatively few contributors are going to want to wade through it. So we have reproduced some of the most important guidelines here, along with some additional guidelines that apply to the Empire wiki.

Page titles

Use lowercase, except for proper nouns

Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalised by default; otherwise, words are not capitalised unless they would be so in running text. When this is done, the title is simple to link to in other articles. Note that the capitalization of the initial letter is ignored in links.

Use the singular form

Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).

Avoid definite and indefinite articles

Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a, and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The League) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Throne). They are noise words that needlessly lengthen article titles, and interfere with sorting and searching.

Section titles

Section titles should also be written in sentence case

Section titles also follow the standard Wikipedia guidelines and use sentence case for section titles.

Do not use links in section titles

Links to other pages should be restricted to the body of a page's text or a section's bullet points. Titles should not contain links as this makes them less obvious as section titles. If necessary, add a short sentence to provide a contextual link to the page in question.

Capitalisation

Only capitalise proper nouns
In-character nouns should be capitalised if they would be proper nouns in-character
Game terms and other jargon are not proper nouns
When referring to a specific proper noun, capitalise it in all cases, even if using a shortened version

In Empire we only capitalise proper nouns - we don't capitalise words just because they are unusual or game terms - as is common in the roleplaying industry. When a noun is made up or unusual in some way, we try to look at an equivalent in the real world. Examples:

The Imperial Conclave is capitalised - because it's a proper noun - like the Houses of Parliament or Windsor Castle.

A coven is not capitalised - in the same way you wouldn't capitalise "pack of cards" in the real world. Similar words like realm and regio and ritual are not capitalised. Eternal is incorrectly capitalised in many places - it should be lower case.

The orc species is not capitalised, nor are lineages, in the same way we don't capitalise fox, human, or duck.

Imperial Orc is fully capitalised because it is a nationality - like British or French. Imperial is always capitalised because it refers to things of a specific empire. So the citizens of the Empire are Imperial citizens.

You don't capitalise senator or general or archmage - like you don't capitalise general or politician or fireman. Obviously Bob the Builder is capitalised so General Dave is capitalised. You wouldn't capitalise empress, but you would capitalise Empress Richilde.

The names of rituals, potions, and items are unique and are capitalised using title style. Spells, herbs, and skills are general and common and are not capitalised. e.g., it is Ascetic Star of Atun; The Sovereign Specific; Biting Blade; heal; true vervain; and magician.

Virtues, even false ones, and the Way are capitalised to distinguish them from their common forms, e.g. "traditional wisdom" vs. "she lacked Wisdom", "I hate this" vs "I am dedicated to Hate". The word "virtues" is not capitalised in the same way that the word "morals" is not, but the Way of Virtue is a proper noun.

Names of runes and their titles are proper nouns. e.g. Yoorn is known as the Rune of Ending or the Rune of Severance. Note however that it would be written as "a rune of Winter" as there are several runes which hold that property.

The realms are proper nouns, i.e. Summer, Autumn - but "lore" and "realm/realms" should not be capitalised even when following a name, e.g. it is "Winter lore"; "the Spring realm"

When referring to a call made out loud, use ALL CAPS for clarity as to what should be said. This applies even if the call is assumed rather than audible, e.g. when a potion "applies VENOM to the drinker", for maximum clarity in rules text. Examples: "you may call CLEAVE" vs. "a cleaved limb, a limb affected by cleave"; "this curse inflicts WEAKNESS" vs. "the weakness condition"

Specific named terms are capitalised, e.g. Declaration of Sorcery, Statement of Principle, even if their generic forms are not. In a paragraph referring to a specific proper term of this kind, continue to capitalise the shortened form for clarity. Example: "A Declaration of Sorcery was raised before the Conclave last night. The Declaration passed, though there were a number of other declarations that didn't."

Common misspellings

A formal negotiation, e.g. with an eternal, is a parley. Conversely, when someone gains wealth or influence through risk and guile, the verb is to parlay.
The bay south of the Empire is the Bay of Catazar with no double letters (but note that the adjective is Catazarri)
The northernmost League city is called Temeschwar with a c between the s and the h.
The nation of tattooed forest-dwellers and its founder are Navarr with no double A.

Category names

Category names should be plural if the articles in the category are a set of items in that category
Category names should be singular if the articles in the category are set of articles about the category

A category where each article is an example of the category should be plural - rituals, magic items, spells. A category where each article is an article of content about the category should be singular - The League, The Imperial Conclave, Religion.

Grammar

Please use the Oxford comma

The Oxford comma is a comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and, or, or nor) in a series of three or more terms. For example, a list of three countries should be punctuated either as "France, Italy, and Spain", not as "France, Italy and Spain".

Terminology

LRP should be an abbreviation and not a word and never larp
IC and OOC should be written in full, not abbreviated

In Empire we use live roleplaying, not live role-playing and never live action roleplaying. Consequently LRP should be regarded as an abbreviation not a word. "An LRP game" not "A LRP game".

IC and OOC should be written in full as in-character or out-of-character, not abbreviated. In general the wiki should avoid abbreviations, even where they are common use in LRP. The aim is to ensure that the wiki stays as readable as possible by people who are new to LRP.

Uploading content

There are many interested individuals who have a vested interest in the content of a photograph, the model shown, the people who made the costume, the photographer, the organizers of the event where the photograph was taken, or the owners of the site where the photograph was taken. If there is an image being used on our wiki that is one of yours in any of these definitions and you are unhappy then please get in touch. We can add an accreditation and a link everywhere the image is used or we can remove it. We will always remove any image as quickly as humanly possible at the request of any concerned party.

Most photographers have a page which collects their images and tells you the code to insert. You can look them up here.

Please don't upload images of LRPers to the wiki without ensuring that you have the permission of the players involved in creating the image. Note that editing an image, including cropping, is a modification that you generally need the artist's permission for.

Images from films are used without any intent to challenge the owner's copyright. They are used to direct players to the films and indicate which characters from the films provide good inspiration for the game. Any images uploaded should include captions and accreditation which makes the source clear.

All tunes and lyrics must be credited. We suggest that every piece of music includes the following credits the title, original title if any, words and tune credits (if not traditional). Please do not upload copyrighted material without the explicit permission of the authors/performers, where something is used with permission of the copyright holders please say so.