Manual of Style

Overview:
Policies →Manual of Style →Page organization →Templates Policy

The purpose of this manual is to create guidelines to help uniformize content across articles in the Undertale OC Wiki. Reading this is recommended to efficientize the editing process, as it would save editors a lot of corrections. If any questions, suggestions or issues arise please contact administration. Thank you.

General

Language

• Undertale was released in American English, and thus this wiki will use standard American English.
• In this wiki, the use of the singular "they" is not only accepted but also needed in certain contexts.
  • The reflexive form of the singular "they" used in this wiki is "themself".
• "Epilogue", "Monologue", "Dialogue" etc. should be preferred over "Epilog", "Monolog", "Dialog"
• When making possessive forms of singular and proper nouns ending with s, append 's at the end. Example: Sans's.
• Present tense should be used whenever possible.

Article Content

• Verifiable: Most, if not all, content from this Wiki should be verifiable. This means that the reader should be able to confirm if the content is true, accurate, and justified, should doubts arise.
  • See Reference and Citing
• Relevant: Articles must contain information closely related to the topic in question, without digressing or going into tangents.
• Neutral POV: situations must be discussed in a disinterested tone, giving no bias or preferences and avoiding giving unimportant issues undue weight. Avoid the use of imperative form and second person (you) when writing articles.
• Formal Language: Not colloquial. Avoid the usage of slang and conversational or casual undertones.
• Encyclopedic Language: Language must be clear and unambiguous. Avoid unnecessary verbosity. This Wiki should use simple language and sentence structure for the sake of all readers. Language should not be too vague, and sentences should not be too long.

Images

Images with no animation must be in .png format, preferably with lossless compression.

Links

There are several rules to follow when adding links to articles.

1. There shouldn't exist multiple links to the same page in a single article. Exceptions are:
   • when two or more links are linking to a different section of the same page.
   • when one of the links is in the infobox/navbox and the other in the actual content.
2. There mustn't exist links in section headers.
3. Pages that can be linked internally must be linked as such. Further help on how to internally link pages check Help:Links and Help:Interwiki link.

Spacing

Bad	Good
*Bullet **Point ***List #Numbered ##List ==Header 2== ===Header 3=== ====Header 4==== {{Template with named parameters |a=a |ab=b|abc=c |abcd=d}} {{Template with numbered parameters| A|B|C|D}} ;Bolded :Indent	* Bullet ** Point *** List # Numbered ## List == Header 2 == === Header 3 === ==== Header 4 ==== {{Template with named parameters |a = a |ab = b |abc = c |abcd = d}} {{Template with numbered parameters|A|B|C|D}} ; Bolded : Indent

Reference and Citing

As this wiki grows, so do rumors. All content in this wiki should be verifiable, and any information must be cited with quotes, explanations in footnotes and/or reliable sources.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is, in few words, taking someone else's work and submitting it as one's own. This includes but is not limited to copying, quoting, paraphrasing or submitting a third party's work without proper acknowledgement or citation. As long as a quote is short and properly cited, it does not count as plagiarism.

Examples of reliable sources

• Content from an OC's story
• Content from an OC author's media account (DeviantArt, Tumblr, Twitter, etc...)

If at any point the content is proven to be false or plagiarized, a source falsified, or otherwise deemed inappropriate for this Wiki, it will be deleted immediately.

How to cite

Inline citations are placed immediately after the text it applies to. Any punctuation, excluding dashes and parentheses, is placed before the citation.

Do

Undertale was released on September 15.^[1]

Undertale (released on September 15^[1]) is a game by Toby Fox.^[2]

Undertale —a game by Toby Fox^[1]— was released on September 15.^[2]

Do not

Undertale (released on September 15)^[1] is a game by Toby Fox^[2].

Citation needed

In the case of finding questionable content not properly cited, don't delete it. Instead add the {{Citation needed}} template. Before adding the template, it is recommended to try to find a source first.

When not to use {{Citation needed}}

• Obvious nonsense/trolling/vandalism, delete it.
• When the content is plausible but still very doubtful, search for a source instead, or delete it. If deleted, provide an adequate summary (ex: "Very doubtful – please do not revert without giving a citation").
• To digress, to "pay back" another editor, or because of personal feelings related to the content.

If your work is tagged or deleted for lack of citation, provide a proper citation.

Adding references

Visual editor

On the top bar, click Insert and choose Reference. Type in the text of the citation or footnote desired. For items sharing the same reference, click the Use an existing reference button, or copy and paste the brackets directly. At the end of an article, in a section titled References, insert a references list.

Should one desire to add a template to a reference, the use of the Source Editor is recommended; disregarding this advice might cause the Visual Editor to crash and the edit to be lost.

Source editor

Use the following code

<ref>Actual reference</ref>

Templates and links go inside the ref tags

<ref>{{Template}},[[Link]]</ref>

For items sharing a same reference, add an identifier <ref name="name"> to the first reference, then use use a terminated ref tag <ref name="name" /> to the next ones. The identifier is arbitrary.

This is a thing. <ref name="name">Only the text from the first tag will be used as a
footnote. The name can be anything with at least one letter, and there can be multiple
tags with multiple names.</ref>

By adding an identifier to the ref tag, using another tag with the identifier will use
the same reference for multiple inline citations.<ref name="name" />

Only the text in the first tag is used.<ref name="name">Making the text inside this
useless.</ref>

<references />

At the end of an article, in a section titled References, insert a references list using the terminated tag <references />.