Tardis:Tardis Manual
We here at the TARDIS Doctor Who wiki like things to be uniform and everything so this Manual of Style is here to set things straight.
For information on the most basic writing techniques and styles, which are used here, see Wikipedia's Manual of Style.
Below are some basic Doctor Who formatting do's and don't's. There is much to add to this. However, before adding your ideas, suggestions, or changes, please post your suggestions either on the discussion page for this article, or at the Panopticon forum page.
Layout guide
In-universe
All in-universe articles should be structured as follows:
- Main article
- Stub
- Behind the scenes (notice the capitalization)
- Appearances
- Sources
- See also
- External links
- Category
For more details as to what each section of an article should contain, see the Layout Guide.
OOU articles on reference works
- For details of what an article on a given television story should contain, see the Format for Television Story Entries.
- Printed reference works should include the title, author, publisher, and publishing date. The ISBN should also be included, as this creates a link where readers can obtain a copy for themselves.
OOU articles about real people
Write an encyclopedic biography of the person, centered mainly on his or her contributions to Doctor Who, but also include other notable work if known. Do not place items of trivia, such as date of birth, under their own headings or sub-headings, especially if such headings only contain the single word, "unknown." This makes the article hard to read and is actually somewhat annoying.
Naming articles
There are some rules regarding how articles on the TARDIS wiki should be named.
- Article names should be in singular form, not plural. An exception would be a group such as The Beatles, or an organization such as the United Nations, as the official, legal names of these are in plural form.
- The titles of articles about individual characters should be the name by which the character was most commonly known in the the Doctor Who universe, (or "Whonioverse") with later names preferred to earlier names, and full names preferred to partial names or nicknames. Titles, such as military ranks or titles of nobility, should be omitted.
- Unless the name of the article contains a proper noun, only the first word should be capitalised.
- For television stories, especially those produced before "The Savages," the name given in the BBC's story guide is preferred. Alternate names and names of individual episodes from the Hartnell era should redirect to the name given in the BBC guide. "Inside the Spaceship" should redirect to "The Edge of Destruction," while "The Cave of Skulls" should redirect to "An Unearthly Child."
For more details, see the naming conventions (in development; in case of contradictions, regulations of this Manual of Style apply).
Using the #
Do not use the # in a link unless you intend to direct to a section of that article with the title after the # as a section. When linking to articles, particular books and guides with numbers denoting their order, omit the # and simply put the number. Otherwise the software will look for that number as a section title on the page.
e.g. Doctor Who Magazine Issue 373, not Doctor Who Magazine #373
Perspective
In-universe
If something is in-universe, or is described as such, it belongs to the Doctor Who universe exclusively and not in the real world. Characters are for example in-universe, but the actors who play them are not in-universe. Exceptions are persons, places, and organizations which appear or are referred to in the Doctor Who universe which also exist(ed) in the real world, i.e., William Shakespeare, The Beatles, the United Kingdom. Pseudohistory is an integral part of in-universe treatment of canon material.
Out-of-universe
Out-of-Universe refers to the perspective in which an article is written; it is the opposite of in-universe. Something written from an out-of-universe (OOU) perspective is written from a real life point of view. It will refer, for example, to real life publications, actors, authors, events, and so on, acknowledging that its subject is fictional. In contrast, an in-universe perspective will strive for verisimilitude; that is, it will be written as though the author existed within the Doctor Who universe. Articles about any in-universe things, such as characters, vehicles, terminology, or species, should always be written from an in universe perspective. If a section in the article is not, such as the listing of a character's published appearances or behind the scenes details, it should be tagged as such. In contrast, articles about books, movies, games, or other real life Doctor Who material should obviously be written from an out-of-universe perspective, but should still be noted as such. Basically, in-universe articles should never refer to Doctor Who by name, or any other real life things such as publications, actors, or the like.
Use of material from Wikipedia
Use of material from articles on Wikipedia, up to and including copying of articles on Wikipedia (known as "forking"), is permissable if the following guidelines are observed:
- Such material should be properly credited in the External links section with the Wikipedia citation template, whose text would read thusly:
- "This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at "Name of Wikipedia article you used." The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the TARDIS Index File, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
This gives proper credit to the original authors of the article and maintains compliance with Wikipedia's terms for use of material on the Wikipedia site.
- Wikipedia artcles on fictional persons, places, things, or events are written from an "Out-of-universe" perspective. Such articles should be edited to conform with the "In-universe" perspective used on our wiki. The article on Liz Shaw should not begin, "Liz Shaw is a fictional character on the British science-fiction television programme Doctor Who." (Being considerably more familiar with Doctor Who than Wikipedia's more general audience, we pretty much already know this, thanks.)
Headings
Use the == (heading) markup for headings, not the ''' (bold) markup. Example:
===This is a heading===
which produces:
- This is a heading
If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.
- Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lower case.
- Avoid links within headings.
- Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
Usage and spelling
Though the readers and editors of the TARDIS Doctor Who wiki speak many varieties of English, we prefer standard English English spelling, punctuation, and word usage. This is the variety of English used in the Doctor Who series and first printings of most primary sources. In the event that an article uses spelling, punctuation, or word usage typical of American English, or some other form of the language besides English English, contributors who are native users of or otherwise fluent in English English standards reserve the right to edit articles to conform to those standards.
In keeping with the aforementioned standard, dates should place the number first, e.g. 23 November, not November 23.
If the title of an article differs in different varieties of English, the British, or English English, title should be the article title, with alternate names being used as redirects (for example, Target Novelization redirects to Target Novelisation).
Please use complete sentences. "'An Unearthly Child' first broadcast" is not a complete sentence.
Tense
With the exception of episode synopses, ongoing events, and Timeline pages, the past tense should be preferred in the main article text. All in-universe articles should be in past tense.
The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the articles on the TARDIS wiki are presented as historical recordings that have been pieced together from scraps of information left over from the early Universe, Humanian and Rassilon eras. As such, all details pertaining to this history have not yet been uncovered, and more information may be added at a later date. Keeping articles written in past tense provides consistency and flavor. Secondly, the Doctor may travel into the past, the present, or the future, but from his personal perspective, any events which have been previously recorded are now in his own personal past, regardless of where in the universal timeline they may fall. Writing in-universe articles in past tense relates the timeline of the Doctor Who universe with both our and his own perspective.
Do not include phrases like "His ultimate fate is unknown" or "what happened to the ship after that is a mystery". Do not jump back and forth between tenses; this is confusing.
Capital letters
Names like "the Doctor" and "the Master" should not have "the" capitalised. Only titles and proper nouns should be capitalised in the body of an article. "'An Unearthly Child' First Broadcast" should actually be written, "'An Unearthly Child' was first broadcast."
Human
In the in-universe sections of articles, the word "Human" should be capitalized, just as the name of any other sentient species in the Doctor Who universe would be. The word "humanoid", however, should not be capitalized.
Bold type
The article name, when first mentioned, should be bold, bolded and in quotes if it is a story title, or bolded and italicised if it is a series title. (See next sub-heading for more on this.)
Italics
Series and episode names
Names of television series should be:
- Capitalized
- Italicized
Names of individual stories within those series should be in quotes.
- e.g.,
- "An Unearthly Child" was the first transmitted story of Doctor Who."
- "A Girl's Best Friend" was the unsuccessful pilot episode for K9 and Company.
Quotations
Quotations are not encyclopedic in nature and should only be used within a story synopsis or character description, and then only sparingly.
Links
- There is no need to link a keyword every time it occurs in an article; this is redundant. The one exception is if the keyword occurs under two or more different headings, as some readers may only read one section of an article rather than the entire page.
- Using links to redirect readers to another page is only necessary if a related topic cannot be covered in the original article without digressing too far from the article's main topic. There is no need, for example, to place the synopsis, viewer ratings, or uncredited cast for a television story on separate pages and redirect readers to those pages. This can contribute to too many red links in an article if those pages do not yet exist, and can be annoying.
Styles for specific types of articles
Articles on specific stories, novels, or individuals should have the appropriate infobox:
- Articles on specific stories in the Doctor Who or spin-off television series should use the TV story infobox. See the [[ Format for Television Story Articles for more information on how these articles should be written.
- Articles on novels should use the Novel Infobox.
- Articles on individuals (companions, enemies, background characters) should use the Individual infobox.
- Articles on audio dramas which have been released on CD should use the CD Infobox.
- Infobox titles and names should not have links, as they would simply point to the article the infobox and thus the reader are already on. In other words, for the infobox on the page for "An Unearthly Child," "An Unearthly Child" should not be a link since it would only point to the page for "An Unearthly Child."
