Terraria Wiki:Style guide/editcopy

The following is a guide to creating or editing mainspace pages at Terraria Wiki in accordance with the established article style. It describes accepted and established practices at Terraria Wiki, and should not be used to impose changes to the wiki. These guidelines are governed by precedent and 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.

This is a guide to editing or creating articles on the Terraria Wiki. You can find established practices below; please be sure to follow these to the best of your ability to make sure that your edits are ((accepted))? by the community. As a general rule, follow the established precedent at all times; look at similar pages to the one you are editing if you don't know what to do.

General guidelines

 * Read the page before editing, especially the intro, Notes, and Trivia. You should avoid adding information that is already mentioned somewhere else.

The first paragraph must contain the article's name in bold when it is first used. The topic in question should be categorized (is it early-game, pre-Hardmode, early Hardmode, post-Plantera, or post-Moon Lord)? Is it a melee weapon, magic weapon, ammunition, enemy, block, informational accessory, etc? Is it Expert or Master-exclusive?

Next, add info about how it is found/obtained. Where and when does the enemy spawn (at night, in Caverns, during a Frost Moon)? What monster/boss drops this item, and how often? What biomes does this block come from? What chests can you find this accessory in? Write whatever is relevant to the article in question.

Finally, describe the behavior or function of the article in basic terms. What makes Meteor Bullets different than others (they bounce)? How does a Hoplite attack you (it throws Javelins)? What does an Ancient Chisel do when equipped (+25% mining speed)? Do not include complicated math, obscure behavior, or anything that is not a basic, general overview.

Things to avoid:
 * Use fact, not opinion. Do not write things like "This weapon is powerful/ineffective", "This boss is difficult", etc.
 * Never leave personal comments such as "Help me format this" or "Please verify this". That needs to go in the Summary box.
 * Proofread your edit to make sure it fits with the rest of the article's style. If you neglect spelling or grammar, repeat information by accident, or write vaguely, your edit might be modified or undone by other editors. (If you aren't good with English grammar or formatting, say so in your edit summary, and we will help you fix it.)

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

 * 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.

Formatting guidelines

 * 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 print should usually be avoided for emphasis on other words. Instead, italic print (two apostrophes) is preferred.
 * The first instance of an entity name on a page should always be linked, via double brackets (e.g. ). This does not apply to the page title (which should be in proper bold instead; see below). Further mentions of the same entity 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 entity's first mention.
 * Template calls should be lower-cased (i.e.  instead of  ). Navigational templates, however, are to be called upper-cased (i.e.   instead of  ). This facilitates distinguishing these two types of templates in the source code.
 * Times of day are to be formatted as in-game, i.e., in a   format. Hours do not have a leading zero.
 * When displaying dimensions, multiplication in formulas, etc. the × is the proper operator. The letter x is mathematically not correct.

Page title pluralization rules

 * The name of the page should be singular if it's about only one entity.
 * The name of the page should be plural if it is about a list of entities which are named differently (e.g. Work Benches: there exists a Marble Work Bench and a Martian Work Bench, which are named differently but share a page).
 * The name of the page should be singular if it is about a list of entities which have the same name (e.g. Zombie: all Zombie variants share the same name, and all of them share a page).

Capitalization rules

 * All entity names should be capitalized as in-game (e.g. Iron Broadsword, Roman candle), groups of items should be lower-cased (e.g. bars, bullet).
 * However, group pages of entities which have similar names should be capitalized as in-game (e.g. Work Benches, Fishing Poles: these items have similar names (Work Bench and Martian Work Bench), and Work Bench is caitalised on both words in-game, so the page is also capitalised).
 * There are edge cases where the plural of an item name is the same as the name of an item group, e.g. Chests (refers to multiple of the standard, wooden Chest item) vs. chests (refers to any chest), Seeds (refers to multiple of the Seed ammunition item) vs. seeds (refers to the group of items that are to be planted in the ground).
 * Page titles and section headings should be in, if it doesn't break the rules 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 instance, for items, describe the item and state how it is acquired.

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. Sections are added via. For example,  would add a "Notes" section.


 * 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.
 * See also: Bulleted list of related articles. Pages which are already linked to should not be mentioned here another time.
 * 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.
 * References/Footnotes: Put reflist here, if necessary. If there is no actual reference (i.e. link to a source) among the &lt;ref&gt;s, "Footnotes" is the more appropriate section title.

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

Trivia
See the trivia rules for guidance on trivia sections.

Image file naming

 * Image names should follow the capitalization rules of their respective article. For example, Celestial Starboard, or Stardust armor
 * If your image is a GIF of an item being used, put the word (demo) after the item name. For example, Terraprisma (demo).gif or Shield of Cthulhu (demo).gif
 * If the item works differently across different versions of the game, only the newest version (relative to PC) should follow this name. Other versions should have the word (old) appended to it : ItemName (old).png or ItemName (demo) (old).gif
 * If your image is a player wearing a set of armor, specify the character's gender appearance. Hallowed armor (male).png or Hallowed armor (female).png
 * If none of the above apply, use a concise but descriptive file name and separate words with spaces. Hoik elevator example.png, Mourning Wood attacking.gif

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