Teflpedia:Style guide

While there is no hard and fast style guide for articles on Teflpedia, some consistency is desirable.

General layout

 * As in many other forms of modern text presentation, such as PowerPoint displays and Web pages, it makes for easier reading if sentences are kept short and paragraphs broken up and separated by spaces.
 * Internal links should be kept to a minimum and, in general, a concept or word should only be linked the first time it is used in the article. A typical exception is in long articles in which the first use - of an important item - is at a sufficient distance, i.e. several paragraphs away, from the following instance to warrant the link.

Article titles

 * 1) The article title should be the commonest way of defining the content. Alternate titles should be created as redirects.
 * 2) This includes, usually, the singular rather than plural, i.e. "Noun" not "Nouns". Plural titles should be created as Redirects.
 * 3) With certain exceptions titles should have only the first letter capitalised.
 * Exceptions are "proper names" of places or people; book or film titles etc.
 * 1) The title should be referenced in the first sentence, which should be a full sentence, and be in bold:
 * The first line of e.g. article "Punctuation" should be (and is):
 * "Punctuation refers to the marks, &hellip;"
 * and not:
 * "refers to the marks, &hellip;" i.e. using the title as part of the first sentence.

Headers and sections

 * The first section should give an outline of the content. It should not have a header.
 * Other sections within an article are marked using headers created using one to six "=" before and after the header text, i.e. ==Biography==.
 * Headers will appear automatically in the table of contents (TOC) if there are more than three sections (with their respective headers).
 * Up to (down to?) six levels of header can be used.
 * As level one headers (i.e. those using a single "=" before and after the text) are the same size as the page title, they are deprecated, so in practice most headers will consist of two "=" on either side of the header.


 * Never "jump" a level. A level three header should always follow, or be within, a level two section; likewise, a level four should be within a level three section etc.
 * Sections should divide the content logically; do not use excessively.
 * Headers should be concise and clearly indicate the subject of the section.
 * Headers should normally be written with only the first word capitalised. See section on article titles above.
 * Do not repeat section or subsection headers, as only the first instance can be directly addressed.

Special sections
Some subjects are given their own sections, and corresponding headers, at the foot of the page if they are required:


 * ==References== which will include any  , if there are any   tags in the article.
 * ==See also== contains any relevant internal Teflpedia links, such as Help:Editing, not included in the body of the text.
 * ==External links== relevant links to other web sites.

The above order of sections is recommended.