Thelemapedia:Article Basics

(Revision as of 05:07, 18 Sep 2004)

This article is borrowed from the excellent Wikipedia Guide to Layout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_Layout).

The Thelemapedia Article Basics is an annotated, working example of some of the basics of laying out an article.

Table of contents

1 Introductory material

2 Structure of the article

3 Images

4 Standardized appendices

4.1 Quotations
4.2 Related topics
4.3 References
4.4 External links

Introductory material

The subject of the article should be mentioned in bold text (subject) at a natural place in the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph. The name of the subject may appear slightly different from the title of the page, or may include variations, but normally it is identical to the page title.

If the article is long enough to contain several paragraphs, then the first paragraph should be short and to the point, with a clear explanation of what the subject of the page is. If further introductory material is needed before the first header, then this can be given in additional paragraphs. It is very rarely useful to put ==Introduction== as the first header because the first paragraph, above the first header, should be the introduction to the article. A common title for the first section of an article under the introductory paragraph is "Overview", although more specific section titles are generally to be preferred.

Structure of the article

Paragraphs should be relatively short, as the eye gets tired of following solid text for too many lines. Similarly, articles themselves should be kept relatively short.

Headers also help make an article clearer and determine the table of contents. Since headers are hierarchical, and some people set their user preferences to number them, you should start with ==Header== and follow it with ===Subheader===, ====Subsubheader====, and so forth.

While it may be preferable to use bullet points within a section instead of using sub-headings, bolded text should not be used; good HTML practice dictates that headers are marked up as headers. This aids people using browsers which can highlight (or show only-) headings; blind people and others whose text readers can skip from heading to heading, search spiders such as Google's, and robots which may be used to automatically re-style Thelemapedia in the future.

The degree to which subtopics should be kept on a single page or given their own pages is a matter of judgment.

Images

If the article can be illustrated with pictures, find an appropriate place to position these images. For more information, see the Wikipedia Picture tutorial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial).

Standardized appendices

Certain optional standardized sections go at the bottom of the article, as you see below.

Quotations

Under this header, list any memorable quotations that are appropriate to the subject.

"Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted." -- Hesketh Pearson, Common Misquotations (1934)

References

In the text of an article, cite references parenthetically as "(Author-Last-Name, Year)". If necessary, add chapters ("chap. 3") or pages ("p. 15" or "pp. 12–23") after the year (+ comma), e.g. if the information is hard to find in a large book. When a reference is used as a noun, put the year in parentheses, e.g. "Milton (1653) says..." For two authors, use (Author1 & Author2, year); for more authors, use (Author1 et al., Year).

Put under this header, again in a bulleted list, any books, articles, web pages, etcetera that you used in constructing the article and/or recommend as sources of further information to readers.

Pooh, W. T. & Robin, C. (1926). How to catch a heffalump. In A. A. Milne (Ed.), The Karma of Kanga, pp. 23–47. Hundred Acre Wood: Wol Press.

Blair, Eric Arthur (Aug. 29, 1949). Looking forward to a bright tomorrow. New English Weekly, p. 57.

Chalmers, Rachel (Sep. 1, 2000). Guru of the Unix gurus (http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/09/01/rich_stevens/index.html). Salon.

Gates, B. & Ballmer, S. (1998). The Big Open-source Advocacy Homepage. Retrieved Aug. 5, 2003 from http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.php

The most important thing is to include the complete citation information, just as you would for any other bibliography; the precise formatting is still debatable and can be fixed later.

External links

Put here, in list form, any web sites that you have used or recommend for readers of the article. Describe it if possible.

Yale Style Manual for web pages (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/)

Its code is:

* [http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ Yale Style Manual for web pages]

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