Pillars of Eternity Wiki:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles in . The formatting described here is a guideline and can be overridden where circumstances warrant it. These guidelines will never be unerringly perfect for every situation. However, please try your best to keep to the advice outlined in this article so others may use your edits as an example when creating and editing their own articles.

These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for the , but a more expansive set of guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at Wikipedia Manual of Style. Feel free to discuss our Layout Guide on the |talk page.

Article layout
A quick reference for order and naming of standard layout items. This does not mean every article needs to have all of these layout items:
 * 1) Infobox
 * 2) Lead section
 * 3) Table of contents (TOC)
 * 4) Main article
 * 5) Gallery
 * 6) Historical notes / trivia
 * 7) See also
 * 8) External links
 * 9) References
 * 10) Navboxes
 * 11) Categories

An article should begin with an introductory lead section, that provide an overview of the topic, briefly summarizing the article for the reader. Followed by the rest of the article divided into sections, each with a section heading.
 * Lead section
 * The name of the article should be emboldened in its first usage in the lead, as should any alternate names mentioned in the lead. These bolded titles should not have links within them.
 * Leads should not exceed one or two pruned paragraphs.

A table of contents will automatically appear in articles with a minimum of four headings (unless forced by the below options). By default this will be left-aligned above the first section heading. This behaviour can be changed by using  or.
 * Table of contents (TOC):

forces a table of contents to appear wherever it is placed in an article, no matter how many headlines the article has. removes the table of content from the page.

In some cases the readability of a page can be improved by placing the table of content right-aligned. You can use  to achieve this. Naturally this doesn't work well for pages with infoboxes (at the start of the page).

All infobox material should be detailed in the article proper. See Category:Infoboxes and Category:Navigational templates for a list of available templates on the wiki.
 * Infobox/Navboxes:

Images
A picture speaks a thousand words, but a misplaced or untidy image can detract from an article. When choosing images, keep in mind placement, size and the appropriateness of the image to the section. Let images flow with the text instead of break it up.


 * Large images such as screenshots should use the "thumb" (example: ) option which displays large images as thumbnails. Images should generally be right-aligned, to enhance readability by allowing a smooth flow of text down the left margin - the "thumb" option does this by default. If an infobox is not being used in an article, a right-aligned picture in the lead section is encouraged.
 * Preferred size for thumb images is 275 pixels, example: ), to remain consistent with other right-aligned elements such as the infobox.
 * When an article has many images, or can be improved by having more, then all but the first picture at the top of the article, should be gathered into a separate "Gallery" section. The gallery section should be the last section and the pictures in it should be in a gallery.

Tables
Tables should use the "wikitable" class when possible, and should include as little 'fancy' formatting as possible. Tables can also be made sortable by adding a "sortable" class. Example:  or

Links
All notable topics on an article that the wiki has articles on should be linked to. However, don't over link, it is recommended that you limit the number of times you link the same word in a single article. Do not use external links in the body of an article. Articles can include an external links section at the end as further reading.

Categories
All content pages (articles and files) should belong to at least one category which is not a maintenance category. Categories should be added to the end of an article — a full list can be found on Special:Categories. They take the form. If you want to refer to a category in an article, you can use  (notice the colon at the start).

All articles should be accessible starting from Category:Contents, via subcategories.