Final Fantasy Wiki:Manual of Style

The Manual of Style is the style manual for all Final Fantasy Wiki articles. It is used to establish consistency across the project, but is not applicable to every situation. This guideline does not spell out all English rules, but rather is focused on issues specific or important to the Final Fantasy Wiki. The standards established here are only applied in full to the main namespace and other things that readers are likely to look at; items like technical documentation and file information may stray from these somewhat as long as the required information is conveyed, and personal namespaces like User and Walkthrough are under no obligation to follow any style rules beyond a general requirement that walkthroughs be readable.

Wikipedia's Manual of Style may be referenced for very general conventions, but with discretion, as some elements may not be consistent with this community's standards. The most glaring discrepancies may be covered in this page, though this guideline is not intended to be a fork or diff of Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

Template documentations are considered auxiliary pages to the Manual of Style, but with a scope exclusive to the use of their respective template.

General style

• Plain English should be used when possible. Avoid unnecessarily complex or rhetorical wording, and write with concision and clarity. (This will help in the construction of lucid prose, a standard required of featured articles.)
• Because releases are usually translated in American English first, American English spelling and conventions are preferred over other dialects.
  • The only exception to this is the preference of logical quotation over American punctuation. This is to maintain an encyclopedic style and is not a preference based on regional style.
• Writing should be in third-person whenever possible. The person playing the game is always "the player", not "you", and the editor should never refer to themselves.
• The most recent English translation of the release in question is used when describing it. This applies both to naming and to capitalization of names and terms.
  • Sometimes, a release follows different capitalization rules for terms in gameplay (in combat menus, on-screen battle text, etc. using title case) than it does in lore contexts (normal dialogue, biographical descriptions, etc. using sentence case), particularly for common nouns. In these cases, the capitalization used is context-dependent.
  • Generally, titles of works that Square Enix has trademarked as and refer to in all-caps are rendered here in title case (e.g. SE usually prefers "FINAL FANTASY", we usually prefer "Final Fantasy").
• When listing items in infoboxes, use a comma-separated list for closely related or similar items, but a return-separated list (using <br>) for items that are not necessarily related.

Representation

An article is represented by its title and a main image (see File use § Main images). Article naming is as follows:

• Articles for most subjects should be titled according to their topic's most representative name, meaning the most commonly used lore-accurate name, from the most recent English translation.
• Articles for gameplay subjects should use the title presented in the game itself, such as in a menu or display on-screen (i.e. The Undying (Final Fantasy XII)).
• For characters, their full names should be used. Omit prefixes, titles, and honorifics (such as "Emperor" Gestahl—see § Redirects below).
• For other topics, use natural language for the article title (i.e. Final Fantasy IX items).
  • Subpages should be avoided as a naming convention in the mainspace. Titles should reflect natural language and sentence formation, rather than technical conventions to which only experienced editors might be privy.
• Do not use DISPLAYTITLE to change a page's name, unless you're dealing with a title that can not be portrayed in a URL. Move the page instead.

To differentiate a page from a similarly-named article on a different subject, a parenthetical qualifier (or "tag") may be used in parentheses at the end of a name. A tag refers to the game the page refers to, and/or the type of page. "Lightning" is used to refer to many things in the series, so the recurring ability is named Lightning (ability). In Final Fantasy XIII, "Lightning" may refer to a character, or an element. As the character is more important and more relevant to the reader, the character is named Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII), while the element is named Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII element).^{[note 1]}

When differentiating between types, use simply the type of page (e.g. "(character)", "(ability)", "(status)"). For tags for releases or series, the following are considered acceptable:

Pages for video games do not get tagged, unless there happen to be two video games with the same name. In cases where the name of a video game has to be disambiguated, the disambiguation page is tagged "(disambiguation)".

Redirects

Redirects help guide readers to the correctly titled page when there is a discrepancy about how the article might be named. However, they should only be created and used sparingly, for maintenance, usability, and SEO reasons.

• Redirects should be created for topics with multiple, frequently used, sourced names. This may include the prefixes, titles, or honorifics applied to character names, such as Emperor Gestahl → Gestahl. Spelling variations between translations, such as Morbol → Malboro, may also warrant redirects if both spellings are used consistently across a single source.

• Redirects should always be created for when two articles are merged, or when a single article is a list covering multiple topics (i.e. Black Magic (Final Fantasy IV) or Final Fantasy X weapons).
  • In these cases, the redirect should point to a specific subsection if applicable (avoiding stacking).
  • The redirect should be categorized appropriately if the original article's topic is hypothetically notable in-universe, is substantially different from its parent article, or has a unique, proper name given to it.

Article layout

There are no fixed guidelines concerning the layout of an article, as each has different needs. However, articles should be as consistent as possible with comparable articles. This section attempts to document the existing, organically established conventions across different article types, but may not always be entirely accurate. When in doubt, check major articles.

Although the following guideline is not strict, it is a requirement to be consistent with any prevalent conventions where possible.

Skeleton

An article's "skeleton" is the most ubiquitous element of its structure. It consists of a lede, a body, and an appendix.

• The lede is a condensed version of the body. It serves as an introduction to the article, and generally should not contain any unique information (and therefore rarely needs to use citations).
  • The lede is the first part of the article, and should be placed before any headings, but after any introductory templates (infoboxes or message boxes).
  • The first sentence of a lede should include the article's name and any alternative names in bold, the type or category the topic belongs to (e.g. "character", "organization", "location"), and the games in which it appeared.^{[note 2]} The first sentence should be as brief and definitional as possible.^{[note 3]}
    • Try to avoid attaching any qualifiers to the words "protagonist" and "antagonist", aside from "main". While the importance of a character can be obvious, it is often subjective and contentious. This also applies to using the words "deuteragonist", which can sometimes be justifiable, and "tritagonist", which almost never is. Furthermore, if a character is a permanent party member, you can just call them a party member.
  • If an infobox is not present, the Japanese name should be used adjacent to the page title, with the {{J}} template. If an infobox is present, the Japanese name is instead included in the infobox.
  • The lede should avoid spoilers if possible.
• The body contains the article's comprehensive, detailed, and organized information. Its primary focus is on canonical and gameplay information. The following guidelines outline existing conventions for consistency:
  • For lore pages:
    • In the following order: historical information (lore, relevant missions and cutscenes), characteristics information (appearance, behavior, etc.), and gameplay information (combat, performance, strategies, etc.).
    • Historical information should be written from an in-universe point of view, the writing should always be in past tense, and history-related sections should not mention out-of-universe facts.
    • Spoilers may be included in the body of the article.
  • For gameplay pages:
    • A logical ordering of information based on relevancy to the player should be used, with requirements that pages within the same category generally be consistent with each other.
    • Stat information is required to come first, followed by strategic information.
    • In pages where the story is described (such as chapter or quest pages), a section for story information may be included. Unlike history information sections from lore articles, these are written in present tense to describe events as they happen, and any spoilers here must be wrapped in spoiler tags. Throughout the rest of the page (and in gameplay articles with no story information sections), spoilers may not be included.
  • For recurring feature pages:
    • An order of sections based on Scope § First-tier coverage must be used to provide overview information on the topic in a specific release, with a link to the most relevant coverage of the topic within that specific release.
  • For real-world pages:
    • For a person or company, a biography or history section starting with brief background information, followed by a list of entries they have been involved with within the series.
    • A musical theme page may receive a layout similar to recurring feature pages.
  • In all cases, the creation of subsections should be proportionate to the length of the parent section and the content therein.
  • The opposite is true of gameplay and characteristics sections, which describe facts from an out-of-universe perspective and should thus be written in the present tense, and should use the term "the player" if appropriate.
• The appendix contains any supplementary information. This includes, in the following order: musical themes sections, other appearances sections, behind the scenes sections, etymology sections, galleries,^{[note 4]} see also sections, notes (annotations and citations), references, external links, and category links. The tense within these sections should use whatever is most appropriate; if the events described in "Behind the scenes" sections, for example, are from the past, use the past tense.

Note that for shorter articles, the body may not be separated from the lede by a section heading. For significantly short articles, the lede may be fully detailed and serve as the body.

Notes