Terraria Wiki:Style guide/editcopy

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 aren't reverted by the community. As a general rule, follow the established precedent at all times; if you don't know what to do, look at similar pages to the one you are editing to see how similar information is presented before you make any changes, because consistency is very important on the wiki.

General guidelines

 * Be sure to read the page before editing, especially the Intro, Notes, Tips, and Trivia sections. Editors frequently add notes, tips, and trivia items that duplicate information already contained in the article's paragraphs above.
 * Use facts, not opinions. 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 other editors will help you fix it.)

Page sections
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.

However, the sections below should exist on almost every page, except for pages that can't follow this style for obvious reasons. (examples of those pages: Terraria, Game platform, List of weapons, all Category:Disambiguations). (Guides can cover a wide array of subject matter, so a single blanket template cannot be applied to all of them. Nevertheless, see Terraria Wiki:Rules § Guides for guidelines concerning guides.)

Intro section
This section of the page is located at the very top of the page, above everything else and generally above the Table of Contents.

At the very beginning, appropriate banner templates (usually exclusive, expert mode only, master mode only, unobtainium, etc.) and infoboxes (usually item infobox or npc infobox) should be placed. Reading the documentation for these templates before changing them or their parameters is highly recommended, especially for infoboxes, as these are difficult to use, and they are partially automated by loading bits of Terraria source code. Usually editors don't have to worry about those templates though, because they've already been put there by somebody else who is more experienced.

The first paragraph must contain the article's name in bold when it is first used. The topic in question should be classified (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.

Tips
This section can be omitted if there aren't any tips to players (except the obvious ones).

This section of the page should have a bulleted list of advice regarding effective practices and what to avoid that might be heplful to players.

Trivia
This section can be omitted if there isn't anything to say.

This section of the page should have a bulleted list of facts that are related to the article topic but aren't related to the game in any way. Examples of trivia are explanations of the etymology of the name of the item/character, explanations of why this content was added to the game, some developer quotes on the topic, etc.

The Trivia rules are strict on this wiki; these rules are laid out on the Wiki Rules page.

History
This section should 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.

This section should generally follow the official changelog, but sometimes there are undocumented changes introduced in updates. In those cases, the section should be based on testing and on the Terraria source code.

Formatting guidelines

 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.

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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