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Freespire Wiki Style Guide

This page is a style guide for the Freespire Wiki. The purpose of these guidelines is to make the Freespire wiki easy to read by following consistent formatting rules. This is not the end-all-be-all guide for every little decision in the wiki. Often, one choice is just as good as any other choice. But, this style guide does help to create a baseline and makes for a wiki that is easier to read and use. If you are editing pages in the Freespire wiki please try to adhere to these guidelines.

Page Formatting

Navigation Pages (Home, Portal, pages linked from the Navigation sidebar, Contribute. etc.) will use the following:

__NOTOC__
 {| border="2" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="100%" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: white; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse;"
 |-
 ! style="background:#AFD3E2;" align="left" | <big>Title</big>
 |-
 | {{Header|wiki_page|description}}
Note: the following image is optional.
 <div style="display:inline; width:130px; float:left;">{{Click || image=Community_drop_small.gif | link=Have you ever watched rain landing on a window? |
 width=100px | height=100px }}</div><br><br><br><center><big>'''Brief Page Summary'''</big></center><br><br><br>
 |}
 {{ProtectedFooter}}

Use the {{Header|wiki_page|description}} and {{ProtectedFooter}} as appropriate on each page.

Content Formatting

Naming conventions:

Pls. avoid the use of a sentence in creating a page, and also avoid the use of special characters as they make creating links difficult and will break a Template: How to Name Your Freespire Wiki Pages

Headers:

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 ==.

Keep markup simple

Use the simplest markup to display information in a useful and comprehensible way. Markup may appear differently in different browsers. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly and only with good reason. Minimizing markup in entries allows easier editing.

Use of Color

Using color alone to convey information should not be done. This also applies to backgrounds, tables, or other things not included in the Freespire wiki stylesheet. Color is not accessible to people with color blindness (especially monochromacy), viewing articles on black-and-white printouts, older monitors with fewer colors, monochrome LCD displays (PDAs, cell phones), and so on. Basic rule of thumb: keep it black and white!

Rules for Writing

Punctuation

In most cases, 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.

References to time

Remember that the Freespire wiki will hopefully be read well into the future. Avoid words or phrases like recently, last year, soon, modern, new. Whenever information may become dated, try to give the time at which it was accurate.

Wiki Tools

HTML to Wiki Converter
HTML to Wiki
HTML to Wiki Converter - Wiki Tables
CSV-format convert it to WikiMedia format
ikiwiki is a wiki compiler. It converts wiki pages into html pages suitable for publishing on a website.

Comments?

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