Against the Storm Official Wiki:Style

Overview
The intent of this style guide is to establish conventions that we can reuse to render information consistently, aid in readers' recognition of game concepts and terms, and assist authors in writing.

Although not essential for authors on this wiki, consult the Wikipedia Manual of Style for an excellent set of guidelines.

Keep articles focused, linear, and simple
The majority of articles (pages) should focus on one and only one topic. Suppress the urge to make a page say All The Things or make One Table To Rule Them All. Less information that is well connected and easy to navigate is better than too much information all in one place, so err on the side of less.

Be familiar with the "inverted pyramid" or "news story structure." This approach starts with an  with just a paragraph or two that introduces the most important things why the reader should care. Then subsequent sections can provide detail, provided the article stays focused. When content diverges, link out. When content gets length, create subpages and link or transclude the content.

Everything on a page should center on that page's topic. Anything related to the page's topic can be included in that article, under an appropriately titled section heading. Anything unrelated should not appear on that page.

While it might seem convenient to try to include things indirectly related to the article, it helps readers to understand the primary purposes of the information to keep the article focused on the topic and its direct relationships. Look for other (or create new) pages where that information might be more appropriate, then add a link.

Headings
Headings should be in sentence case, with only the first letter capitalized, unless it is referring to a special term.

The page title at the top of every article is to be the only level 1 heading on the page. Therefore, when writing section headers on pages, start with level 2 headings,, and proceed to level 3  , etc. as needed.

Make tables straightforward and accessible
To maximize the readability and understandability of tables, follow accessibility guidelines to make tables straightforward, linear, and non-complex. The best way to achieve this is to use MediaWiki's own markup for tables. This markup is constraining in the complexity and arrangement of tables, and these constraints should not be circumvented but treated as creative constraints to challenge you to find the most universally usable format for the data.


 * See also: Help:Tables on MediaWiki
 * See also: Help:Sorting on MediaWiki doc

Don't use tables to achieve layouts that should be done differently (or not at all). If you don't have headers and data that belongs under those headers, and probably with data that deserves to be able to be sorted in some way, then you should probably be using Lists or just paragraphs.


 * See also: Help:Lists on MediaWiki

Don't hardcode styles
If you specify unique styling for images, tables, etc., then when we implement CSS changes, they will have unforeseeable appearance problems. Whenever possible, use MediaWiki markup for images with  and for tables with   and with as little customization as possible.

The same goes for inserting manual line breaks. If your article contains large image thumbnails, like this:  and your text and headers are wrapping awkwardly, use a clearing   to specify where whitespace should be added to prevent wrapping. Don't forget the slash at the end of the tag!

Use upper case for terms with special meaning
When writing about game concepts, use upper case that matches in-game naming conventions when naming concepts that have special meaning to this game. Everything else should be lowercase. This helps reduce the density of capitalized terms in paragraphs, aiding in reading comprehension.

Most unique game concepts should have a dedicated page, so including the link to the page makes the concept stand out even further. However, this is not the sole deciding factor of capitalization. For example, you can have a sentence that discusses when villagers get a bonus to their Resolve, where both are links but only the latter is capitalized.

Use lower case for everything else
Use your judgment to evaluate whether a term is unique or special or whether it means the same thing outside of this game as it does within the game. For example, even though this game has villagers and buildings and they contribute fundamentally to game mechanics, the concepts of villager and buildings aren't unique and have no special meaning, so those terms are written in lowercase. Similarly, referring to the perseverance or resolve of villagers in the face of trials and challenges warrants lower case, but referring to villagers gaining a bonus to Resolve—as the unique game concept—warrants capitalization so that it stands out.

Ask yourself whether the idea could be misinterpreted if you mentioned it to someone unfamiliar to this game. They would understand the idea of villagers, species, goods and resources, food, services, buildings—even farms, camps, production, events, perks, and newcomers. Those terms should all be lowercase. They would not understand or would misunderstand what you meant if you talked about a bonus to Resolve, or the Hostility of the Forest, the Queen's Impatience, Reputation, Cornerstones, Blueprints, Complex Food, Glades, the Hearth, the Storm, Drizzle, or Rainpunk. Those terms should all be capitalized, because those terms warrant attention and special interpretation in order to be understood. This also means naming specific buildings, goods, species, etc., like the Lumber Mill, Mushrooms, and Harpies, since your intent would be misunderstood without those terms being capitalized.

Follow the case written on-screen
The other guideline is, when repeating something that is written on-screen, follow the example on-screen. This means that mentioning constructing camps should be done in lowercase, but clicking the Camps button is uppercase, because that is how it is written on-screen. It is also a convention in English to italicize literals. (That is, you aren't clicking the camps, you are clicking on the word that says, literally, Camps.)

Reference examples
Refer to this table for terms that should be capitalized and terms that should be left lowercase.

Less clear examples
The following examples are words that could go either way. They represent concepts that are less special than those in the table above. However, when they are used to directly refer to specific game concepts or mechanics, they should still be capitalized. However, whenever it is possible to do so without losing meaning, please use lower case for these terms.

For example, there are many references across this wiki to recipes that produce goods, like the recipe for Biscuits. The idea of a recipe itself is not unique to this game and should be lower case in as many instances as possible. Only when referring to the list of Recipes on the screen, or the Recipe Panel, or another similarly specific concept should the term be capitalized.

Italicize literals
Italicize the words that you are reading off the screen to the reader. For example, when giving instruction to click the Options button and click Key Bindings, you should follow the case on the screen and italicize what you both can read: Options and Keybindings.

Use the templates
Numerous templates have been made to create consistent displays of information, to significantly reduce the time it takes to write new articles, to reduce the likelihood of markup errors, and to allow changes to be made site-wide. Please use these templates wherever possible.

See the template's documentation page for full information about to use these templates, variations they allow and encourage, and ideas on how to use them effectively. See this page for a full list of templates on this wiki.

Links to external MediaWiki documentation

 * Help:Editing pages basics on MediaWiki documentation
 * Help:Advanced editing on MediaWiki
 * Wikipedia Manual of Style

Links to external experts on content design and web usability

 * How users read on the web, from NNg
 * Content design, from Gov.uk
 * Tables Tutorial, from w3.org

Thanks for reading! We'll write more soon.