Below are some guidelines to follow when creating articles.
Naming articles[]
- Article names should be in singular form, not plural.
- The titles of articles about persons real or fictitious should be their full names rather than partial names or nicknames. Personal titles, such as "Dr.", should be excluded; these can be mentioned in the article itself.
- Unless the name of the article contains (or is) a proper noun, none of the words after the first should be capitalized.
Headings[]
Use the == (heading) markup for headings, not the ''' (bold) markup. Example:
===This is a heading===
which produces:
- This is a heading
If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.
- Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns or titles in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lower case.
- Avoid links within headings.
- Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
Usage and spelling[]
Though the readers and editors of the Cinematic Titanic Wiki may use many varieties of English, we prefer standard American English spelling, grammar, punctuation, and word usage.
If a word has two acceptable variants in American English, the one that is considered "more American" is to be used. One such example is the spelling of judgement as judgment. The only exception of this rule is the spelling of words ending in -ogue: while dialog is an acceptable version of dialogue, the latter is preferred.
Tense[]
Present tense should be used in plot summaries. Past tense should be used where appropriate in OOU (real-world) articles—to describe a real person's career history, for example.
Italicizing[]
Italicize all references to movies (ex.: Brain of Blood) and show titles (Cinematic Titanic, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the abbreviations CT and MST3K).
Dashes[]
Use the following guidelines and codes for dashes.
- - (Regular hyphen) - Used for listing items, as in this line before the word "used." (Colons may also be used for this.) Also used for hyphenated terms, such as "ex-wife."
–- Used for ranges, such as 1988–1999.—- Used to create parenthetical-style "em dashes"—as here.