The purpose of the Manual of Style is to provide a series of guidelines for users when creating articles for the Underworld wiki. These elements should be followed accordingly and with each article created. Doing so reduces any potential workload on other users. Any questions regarding this manual may be directed at the administrators.
Tips on writing better content[]
If you are unfamiliar with Wiki-style editing, please review the Help pages. If you are inexperienced with Wiki code, please play around with the Sandbox.
If you're familiar with the code used on Wikia, but would like advice on how to actually write a better article, please review the following essay, located on Wikipedia.
Referencing other characters[]
Whenever a character is first introduced into an article, they should always be referenced by their full name, unless such information is unavailable. Subsequent mentions of a character by name may use their first name or another name they are commonly referred by.
Sources[]
Under most circumstances, a source for a given article will be officially released media (be it a game, film, or comic). For general information that the average user could obtain on their own, such as something that occurred within a movie, no source needs to be cited.
In other instances, some information may come from an official source, but isn't readily available to the general public (a prime example of this are the production notes and creator interviews). In such instances, a source of this kind should be cited or linked to.
Is an article a stub, or is it incomplete?[]
While it is a tenet of Wikia and the Wiki format that all articles can be improved, any article that is encountered and thought to be unfinished should be tagged as such. We have three templates to fulfill such a purpose.
- Cleanup Template: This template should be used on articles that are generally complete, but suffer from severe grammatical issues or poor Wiki coding.
- Stub Template: Please insert this template into an article that consists of only a few sentences, but concerns itself with a large body of content, such as a game or main character article. Most item articles aren't considered stubs.
- Incomplete Article Template: This template should be placed into articles that present some substantial information, but lack a majority of available information.
If an article looks as though it could be tagged with more than one of the above templates, please address the issue on the article's talk page.
Past tense vs. present tense[]
Both past and present tense are used in articles, with past tense being used to describe events before those seen in the films/novels. For example, text describing Michael's life before the events of Underworld is written in past tense, while his actions in the film series are written as present tense.
Tips on punctuation and capitalization[]
Italic titles[]
Games or titles should be written in italics for easier understanding of what it means (although not necessary, it is preferred). For example:
- Underworld (film)
- Underworld (novel)
- Lycan Den
- Marcus Corvinus
- Len Wiseman
- Underworld (comic)
Capitals in headings[]
Taken from Wikipedia's Manual of Style:
- Use sentence-style capitalization, not title-style capitalization: Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case. Thus "Rules and regulations", not "Rules and Regulations".
Species names[]
In this wiki, the species names "Vampire", "Lycan", "Werewolf", "Hybrid", and "Immortal" are capitalized, while "human" is not.
Tips on linking and file sharing[]
Multiple links[]
Please make attempts to avoid making multiple links to the same article. For example, if you already have a link to the page Lycan Den in an article, please don't add another link to the same page later in the article.
Spacing links[]
Do not remove spaces between links and other words, as it makes the words run together. For example, Selene knew that is the correct way to space and link, whereas Seleneknew that is not. Also incorrect is Seleneknewthat.
Picture rules[]
- Appropriate pictures are welcome on all articles; however, please keep sizes at 250px and below.
- Please categorize uploaded pictures into the appropriate category.
- Do not upload duplicate photos.
- Do not remove pictures from pages without good reason. If you replace an infobox image, please place the old picture in the article's gallery.