Doom Wiki:Style

The Doom Wiki is supposed to be like an "encyclopaedia" of everything Doom. Bear this in mind when writing articles. It helps if articles are written in a consistent style. Try to keep these rules in mind:

Language

 * Do not use contractions. For example, instead of, "once a chaingunner starts, they'll keep on firing continuously", write "once a chaingunner starts, they will keep on firing continuously.  The following are some common contractions:
 * Write out numbers as their English words. For example, instead of "E1M9 contains 2 barons", write "E1M9 contains two barons". However, beyond one word it makes more sense to write the number numerically: write "52" rather than "fifty two".
 * The above also applies to "first", "second", "third", etc: do not write, "the 1st level is easy", but rather, "the first level is easy".

Style

 * Write about the subject, do not write as though you are talking to the reader. For example, instead of, "imps will often launch fireballs at you", write "imps will often launch fireballs at the player".
 * There are exceptions to this rule. For example, when writing a walkthrough for a level it makes more sense to "talk to the reader" as you are attempting to direct them through the level.
 * Write in a Neutral-Point-Of-View (NPOV) style. If you are writing about a subject for which strong contradictory opinions exist, do not use the article as an opportunity to promote your point of view. Instead, give information about the differing points of view which exist and promote none of them.
 * Only the first word and proper nouns in a heading or page title should be capitalized. For instance, use External links, See also, Stats for IWADs, etc.
 * Many pages are definitions of things related to the game. If this is the case, start the page with a short one sentence definition, and give the name in bold. A good example can be found at the start of Shotgun: "The pump-action shotgun is one of the most versatile and useful weapons in the Doom player's arsenal."
 * The names of games have the first letter capitalized and the remainder in lower case. For example, use "Doom", not "DOOM" or "DooM". See Wikipedia:Talk:Doom for rationale.

Other

 * Do not sign your name at the bottom of articles you edit: remember that this is a Wiki, and that anyone can edit your articles to improve or correct them. Attaching your name to articles is redundant, as anyone who wishes to see who authored a page can do so from the "history" page.
 * Add plenty of links to other articles but do not go overboard. For example, if you are writing about something relating to Hexen, do not turn every reference to Hexen into a link.  Make the first mention a link, but further mentions of Hexen as normal text. The previous two sentences are an example.
 * Remember to categorize! It is a good idea to look around Special:Categories before choosing a category, to see which category suits your article best.  You can categorize a page by including  somewhere on the page where "Your category" is the name of the category you classified the article in.  If you think you need to, you may use more than one category tag to classify an article in multiple categories, however keep in mind that some categories are categorized themselves, so adding more than one category can be redundant.  For example, if you create an article on the ammo clip, you would classify it under ammo only, not ammo and items, because ammo is a subcategory of items.
 * If you have an article and a category with the same name, use the template to automatically reference the article from the category.