| FiM Wiki policies |
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The purpose of this style guide is to homogenize the spelling, linking and appearance of pages throughout the wiki, and set standards for clear and accurate writing. Discuss modifying and adding style guidelines in the forum. Where the style guide is lacking, please refer to the Wikipedia Manual of Style. For a how-to style article, see Help:Style guide.
Official material
- Official material takes precedence over other conventions in spelling and naming.
General style
- Avoid the passive voice, often employed with phrases such as "is seen" or "is shown".
- Avoid journalistic, fiction, instructional and personal-essay writing conventions.
Writing about fiction
- See also writing about fiction
- Use the present tense. For example: Rainbow Dash performs a sonic rainboom in the episode Sonic Rainboom.
- Write from the audience's perspective.
Lead section
- See also lead section in Wikipedia's Manual of Style
- The first paragraph should define the topic without being overly specific. It should establish the context in which the topic is being considered and the boundaries of the topic; for example, the lead for the article list of ponies succinctly states the limits of that list.
- The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article. Avoid lengthy paragraphs and over-specific descriptions, since greater detail is saved for the body of the article.
- If the lead section includes an {{infobox}} template or a similar template, the double curly braces – }} – at the end of the template's syntax should be placed on the last line with the following words, and the text of the lead section should follow in a new line after them.
Trivia
- See also Help:Trivia and the main trivia guidelines
- Avoid creating lists of miscellaneous information. These lists, often placed in a "trivia" section, should in most cases be considered temporary until a better method of presentation can be determined.
Editorializing
- The main body of the article should not be editorialized.
- Image captions may be humorously editorialized.
Formatting
Article titles
- The title of an article should correspond to the name or title of the subject of the article as it appears on the show, preferably as it appears on the credits, or as it appears consistently in recent first-party merchandise or promotional materials.
- Otherwise, the article title should follow an unambiguous use of the name or title on the show.
- Otherwise, the article title should follow a name or title as used by Hasbro, as used by the crew, as used most frequently by reliable sources, as voted per the placeholder name policy, or as specified by Wikipedia's guidelines, in that order.
Images
- Image syntax for images displayed next to text paragraphs should be at the start of the paragraph's line of text.
Galleries
- Images linking to galleries from the main article should be 300px wide.
- Image galleries should have the following parameters set:
<gallery orientation="landscape" spacing="small" position="center" widths="150" captionalign="center">
- Episode galleries should be ordered in chronological order.
- Episode and character galleries can include all applicable images, as defined on the relevant category page. For example, the description for Apple family/Gallery is on Category:Apple family images.
- Location galleries should follow the location gallery guidelines.
- When a character's season gallery is split, the pages should be titled "/Season X episodes Y-Z" (with an unspaced hyphen) and the displayed title should be "Season X, episodes Y–Z" (with the season number spelled out and the episode numbers in numerals). Note that the dash is an en dash per Wikipedia:MOS:ENDASH.
Videos
- Please avoid linking or embedding external videos.
- Articles about songs may embed external videos of the song.
- International versions of videos should be labeled by language, with region in parentheses if applicable.
Capitalization
- Use sentence case in titles and headlines: capitalize only the first word, proper nouns, and as dictated by other specific English rules.
Punctuation
- Subtitles and image descriptions should have either no punctuation or proper punctuation.
- Asides in parentheses are generally indicative of bad structure and should be avoided.
- Logical quotation style is preferred.
Footnote markers
- Footnote markers are placed after punctuation.
Links
- Limit links to a specific article to, at most, one per paragraph.
- Quotes, lyrics, transcripts, and other material that is cited verbatim should not be altered with wikilinks.
- Headers should not have wikilinks unless the link encompasses the entire header.
See also
- Links in see-also sections should be in bullet lists and not italicized.
- See-also links, main article links, and disambiguation links that are placed outside of the see also section should be in an indented and italicized line.
Titles
- Titles of works should be written in italics and without quotation marks. Example: My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.
- Titles of episodes and animated shorts should be written without quotation marks and not italicized.
- Titles of songs should be written in quotation marks and not italicized, with the exception of when they are listed on the tables on Songs, in which case they should be written without quotation marks and not italicized.
Quotes
- Long quotes should be indented, with character names in bold and separated from the spoken dialogue with a colon. Emphasis should be in italics, and stage directions should be sparse and in brackets.
- Example:
- Character: Dialogue, emphasized dialogue.
- [stage directions]
- Fluttershy: [very softly] Yay.
- Short quotes should use {{quote}} and be placed in the appropriate section or in the quotes section.
Songs
- Sung lyrics should be indented and set in a regular font. Spoken lyrics should have the name of the speaking character precede them non-indented and in bold type. If the vocalist needs to be named, their name should be set inside square brackets before their segment.
- Example:
- Lyrics
- Character: Spoken lyrics
- [Vocalist]
- Lyrics
Appearance tables
- Sparse appearance tables should use the appearance table templates: {{Appearances}} and {{character appearances legend}}. When using {{Appearances}}, specify which season by using season= and the number of the season. For example see Princess Luna.
- In order to qualify for appearance tables using these templates, a character should have at least 4 appearances in the series.
- Mostly-full or wordy appearance tables should use the standard two-column (episode|description) tables. For example see Lyra Heartstrings. The two-column tables can be used in combination with less-wordy appearance table templates.
Spelling
Spelling of titles and names should adhere to the way they appear on the show or in material by Hasbro. Terms that do not appear on the show should adhere to American English spelling and to a manual of style, preferably the Wikipedia Manual of Style.
| Term | Notes |
|---|---|
| cute-ceañera | not capitalized; contains hyphen |
| Earth pony | Earth capitalized, pony not capitalized |
| Crystal Pony | both capitalized when used together |
| Elements of Harmony | title case |
| element of (laughter, loyalty, etc) | not capitalized |
| My Little Pony Friendship is Magic | lowercase "is"; no colon |
| Pegasus pony | Pegasus capitalized, pony not capitalized |
| Pegasi | capitalized |
| pony | not capitalized (except Crystal Pony) |
| unicorn pony | not capitalized |
| ursa major | not capitalized |
| ursa minor | not capitalized |
| Winter Wrap Up | title case; no hyphen |
| Friendship is Magic, part 1 | lowercase "part"; contains comma |