Pathologic Wiki:Style Guide


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The following is a guide to creating or editing pages at Pathologic Wiki in accordance with the established article style. These guidelines are not set in stone, but they should generally be followed in order to maintain consistency across pages, unless there is a good reason to make an exception.

Page types
Different page types require different page formats. See the following examples:

For character pages, see the character page format.

For buildings and locations, see the locations page format.

For items, see the item page format.

General guidelines
1. All articles must pertain to Pathologic in some way.

2. The name of pages should follow the listing within any given game. If there is a naming conflict due to differing names between Pathologic and Pathologic 2 the Pathologic 2 version should be chosen, but with a redirect left for the Pathologic version of the page. The Pathologic should be noted under the notes section of the page. For example in Pathologic Bad Grief's Nest is instead called Bad Grief's Lair, but we use the Pathologic 2 version.

3. The first instance of an entity name on a page should always be linked, via double brackets (e.g. Bachelor). Further mentions in the same paragraph and sections should be left unlinked. When starting a new section (example: moving from a Bachelor Route to Haruspex Route the first instance of an entity should be linked there too.

4. All mentions of Pathologic Classic HD should be refered to as Pathologic. The 2005 translation should also be refereed to as Pathologic unless there is reason to differentiate the game which in that case it should be Pathologic (2005). All mentions of the games should be capitalised and italicised (see: Pathologic).

5. The Pathologic Wiki does not currently host pages about individuals, regardless of involvement with the series. Pages and articles about involved companies (such as Ice-Pick Lodge), however, are permitted.

6. Be sure to read the page, and pages of a similar type, before editing!

Formatting guidelines
1. The first instance of the page title should be bold. This should usually be in the first sentence of the article. No other instance of the page title should be bold. To make a word or phrase bold, place three apostrophes (') on each side. For example: bold. Bold print should usually be avoided for emphasis on other words. Instead, italic print (two apostrophes) is preferred.

2. Mentions of routes in pages should be refered to only as "(Healer) Route". For example, a page that calls for the Bachelor's Route should refer to it as Bachelor Route rather than The Bachelor's Route.

3. Templates should be applied to the relevant section or, if the template applies to the entire article, applied to the top of the page. On pages with tabbers templates should be applied within the relevant tab.

4. If a page is short the Table of Contents should be removed. This can be done through the edition of the "NOTOC" command towards the end of pages. Similarly, all pages should have their individual edit sections removed with the "NOEDITSECTION" command.

5. All pages should be connected to a Category. If you do not know the Category of a page try looking at other pages of a similar type. Categories are written at the end of a pages source code.

6. Relevant pages should use Navboxes. These are generally placed at the end of articles except in the case of pages of extraordinary length. In this case Navboxes should be applied to the top of the page instead.

Standard sections
Here is a simple rundown of sections an article can include. For examples based on the article type, see Page types above.

1. The lead (or intro) section of a page should describe the article topic. For instance, for items, describe the item and state how it is acquired and what it is used for.

2. Sections beyond the intro should follow the section style of other pages of it's type or, failing that, should be descriptive of the information below it.

Writing
As this wiki's purpose is to document facts, you should generally avoid speculative and unsourced information. Information does not require sources if they can directly be seen in-game or are generally obvious, but otherwise we do not discourage sourcing. As Pathologic purposelessly leaves some things vague it may require an editor to interpret information rather than give a direct fact. In this case the most plausible interpretation should be provided with accompanying sources if possible.

Articles in the main namespace should be written in the third-person perspective and without terms referential to the reader. However, as the Player occasionally acts as a character within the Pathologic narrative they may need to be referred to. In this case they should be "the Player".

To emphasise points, italics should be used, not bold or ALL CAPS.

Spelling
Due to the inconsistency between the game's translations and the international nature of the community the Pathologic Wiki as a whole does not currently differentiate between American and British English spelling. Pages themselves, however, should endeavour to remain internally consistent. This does not apply to in-game locations which should follow the spelling provided within the game for example: Theatre instead of Theater.