Terraria Wiki:Style guide

The following is a guide to creating or editing mainspace pages at Terraria Wiki in accordance with the established article style (these do not apply to Guide: pages). It describes accepted and established practices at Terraria Wiki, and should not be used to impose changes to the wiki. 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 Enemies, see the Enemy page format
 * For Items, see the Item page format
 * For Biomes, see the Biome page format

General guidelines

 * The name of the page should be plural if it is list of items which are named differently (e.g. Work Benches), otherwise, it should be singular (e.g. Armored Skeleton).
 * 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 can also be used for emphasis on other words in rare cases.
 * All item names should be capitalized as in-game (e.g. Iron Broadsword).
 * The first instance of an item name on a page should always be linked, via double brackets (eg. ). Further mentions of the same item should generally not be linked, though multiple identical links can exist if they occur far from each other and would be helpful to readers. An example might be one link in the introductory section along with an identical link in a section, table, or template occurring further down. Duplicate links may be especially helpful on larger pages that would require scrolling to find an item's first mention.
 * Be sure to read the page before editing. Editors frequently add notes, tips, and trivia items that duplicate information already contained in the article's paragraphs above.

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

The lead (or intro) section of a page should describe the article topic. For items, describe the item first, then state how it is acquired (for crafted items, do not include details of how the item is acquired within the lead; use a separate Crafting section, as described below).

Any or all of the following additional sections can be included in an article. They should generally be in the order they are presented in below (Crafting section first, if applicable; then Notes below it; then Tips, etc.). Sections are added via. For example,  would add a "Notes" section.


 * Crafting: Only for crafted items and/or crafting materials. For crafted items, use the crafting recipe template. For crafting materials, use the crafts top, crafts row, and crafts bottom templates. These can be complicated for beginners, so feel free to ask for help from an active editor, or post a message at Terraria Wiki:Community portal.
 * Notes: Bulleted list of short facts about the article topic.
 * Tips: Bulleted list of helpful hints regarding effective practices and what to avoid.
 * Trivia: Bulleted list of facts relating to the article topic, which may be interesting but have no bearing on the game. Explaining the etymology of an item name could be one example. See trivia rules for an expanded guide to Trivia sections.
 * History: List of changes to the article topic from various game updates, with each item using the history template. A history section should almost always be included, with at least one item stating which update introduced the game element. Should also be the only location acknowledging game updates that have caused introductions or modifications of page content.

Guides
Guides can cover a wide array of subject matter, so a single blanket template can't be applied to all of them. Nevertheless, do see Terraria Wiki:Rules for guidelines concerning these pages.

Trivia
See the trivia rules for guidance on trivia sections.

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