Tardis:Tardis Manual

We here at the TARDIS Index File like things to be uniform and everything so this Manual of Style is here to set things straight.

For information on the most basic writing techniques and styles, which are used here, see Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

This Manual of Style can often be developed further, however before adding your ideas, suggestions, or changes, please post your suggestions either on the discussion page for this article, or at the Panopticon forum page.

Leads
All articles must have an introductory section, called a lead, which gives context to the article. The lead should attempt to summarize the notability of the topic of the article, or to at least give a summary of what the article is about. Leads should usually begin with the name of the article in bold, although some leeway is allowed for exact positioning of the bolded topic name, depending on sentence structure. If the article is about subject which should be italicized, such as a book or episode title, then the topic name should be bolded and italicized.

Contrast the following beginnings to leads: Happy Endings was the 50th novel in the Virgin New Adventures series. . . which yields
 * Happy Endings was the 50th novel in the Virgin New Adventures series . ..
 * while

Tom Baker portrayed the Fourth Doctor, amassing more episodes than any other actor who played the Doctor. .
 * which produces:
 * Tom Baker portrayed the Fourth Doctor, amassing more episodes than any other actor who played the Doctor

Leads are vital parts of articles, as good leads draw the reader into an article. Articles lacking leads can be easily identified as they usually have no body text above the automatically generated table of contents. They save readers' time, by allowing them to quickly decide whether they're reading about the topic for which they were searching. Leads can be of highly varying lengths, as some topics are simply more notable than others. In some cases, as at DWA Issue 205, the lead is very short indeed, but it's entirely adequate to the ordinary issue that #205 was. In other cases, as at companion or ''Planet of Giants, there are many points that make the subject notable, and so the leads are longer. An interesting case study is that described by leads on story pages, in which our wiki community discussed the pros and cons of lead length.

In-universe
All in-universe articles should be structured as follows:
 * 1) Main body of article
 * 2) Behind the scenes
 * 3) See also
 * 4) External links
 * 5) Category

For more details as to what each section of an article should contain, see the Layout guide.

Out-of-Universe articles on reference works

 * For more information, see the individual articles


 * Format for Television stories
 * Format for Novels
 * Format for Short stories
 * Format for Audio stories
 * Format for Comic stories

Out-of-Universe articles about real people
Write an encyclopaedic biography of the person, centred mainly on his or her contributions to Doctor Who, but also include other notable work if known. Do not place items of trivia, such as date of birth, under their own headings or sub-headings, especially if such headings only contain the single word, "unknown." This makes the article hard to read and is actually somewhat annoying. Please also see "Articles on living people", below, for important information regarding content.

Naming of articles
There are some rules regarding how articles on the TARDIS wiki should be named.


 * Article names should be in singular form, not plural. An exception would be a group such as The Beatles, or an organisation such as the United Nations, as the official, legal names of these are in plural form.
 * The titles of articles about individual characters should be the name by which the character was most commonly known in the Doctor Who universe, with later names preferred to earlier names. Titles, such as military ranks or titles of nobility, should be omitted.
 * If a full name is provided, though is not generally used, the body text of the article itself should start with it. For example, the article should be listed as Amy Pond, but should begin with "Amelia Pond, more commonly called Amy Pond..." Exceptions to this rule are articles in which usage of the common name would result in the need of brackets to disambiguate the title and refer to which story the character came from. An example of this is Andrew Stone whose commonly known name Andy, would result in the article being called Andy Stone (The Waters of Mars).''"


 * Unless the name of the article contains a proper noun, only the first word should be capitalised.
 * For television stories, especially those produced before The Savages, the name given in the BBC's Episode Guide is preferred. Alternate names and names of individual episodes from the Hartnell era should redirect to the name given in the BBC guide. "Inside the Spaceship" should redirect to The Edge of Destruction, while "The Cave of Skulls" should redirect to An Unearthly Child.
 * The MediaWiki software which underpins this wikia has some limitations about characters which cannot ever be used in page titles. These characters are |, #, <, >, {, }, [, and ].  For advice about how to handle a page which should include one of these characters, like 2|entertain or Man #1, please see this discussion.


 * A related issue is that of page linking. The # character in a link tells the software to link to a section of an article.  For instance, Tardis:Manual of Style creates a specific link to this section of this article.  One of the areas in which this issue becomes most important is in the naming of articles about specific issues of magazines. The 273rd issues of Doctor Who Magazine would in some instances be referred to as DWM #273 or Doctor Who Magazine #273.  However, this is impossible.  Although DWM  creates a blue link and appears to work, it is actually linking to DWM and looking for the section called "273".  Thus, it produces a false blue link.   This phenomenon is perhaps easier to see with a red link.  DWM Issue  creates a red link — DWM Issue  — because it's actually linking to the article DWM Issue (which doesn't exist) and looking for the section named "273". Because of all this, the closest workaround is DWM Issue 273.

Naming conventions
Titles such as Mr, Mrs, Dr, Professor, religious ranks or military ranks should not be included in article titles.
 * For example a character such as Amelia Rumford, may be listed in the credits as 'Professor Rumford' however her full name is used for her article.


 * If a character is widely known by a title, such as Sergeant Benton, then a redirect can be created under that name, pointing to the proper article title. This however should only be done sparingly and only with major characters.


 * For characters who only have one name given such as Spencer, the story in which they appeared is added to the article name to disambiguate between articles; Spencer (The Faceless Ones), Spencer (The War Games), Spencer (Doctor Who and the Silurians). This is only done if there are multiple uses of the character's name such as the Spencer example, if the character has only a single name and no other articles direct to that single name it does not need to be disambiguated.
 * If a character who needs to be disambiguated has appeared in multiple stories you may either use their first appearance as the disambiguation or another identifying element such as Arnold (companion).


 * For more information on disambiguation see our Disambiguation policy.

Referring to certain characters
Because of a need to achieve consistency on the wiki, we have taken a stand as a community about the way we refer to certain characters. We acknowledge that there could be other ways of handling certain characters, but we nevertheless have a preference for certain syntax over others.

Incarnations of the Doctor
By way of forum consensus, the names of specific incarnations of the Doctor shall use the cardinal number of the incarnation in front of the word Doctor, and both words shall be capitalised. Terrance Dicks' use of this form in EDA: The Eight Doctors was seen as particularly determinative to the question of whether it was an "in-universe expression". Consequently, the names, "First Doctor", "Second Doctor", and the like, were approved for use within the bodies of both real world and in-universe articles. This ruling does not preclude the use of other forms which allow editors to vary their word choice. Equally valid are terms like: "first self", "second body", "third incarnation", "fourth lifetime", "fifth life". In these instances, however, neither word shall be capitalised. The following construction, which was once widely seen as "more in-universe" is now strongly discouraged: the Doctor

Please avoid "pipe switching" to the name "the Doctor", as this generalises a more accurate and specific name. Please consider that many of our readers will not necessarily know as much about Doctor Who as you. Therefore the phrase "The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan . . ." — which might clearly identify the incarnation of the Doctor to you — is not as helpful as, "The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan . . ." The latter construction instantly identifies the incarnation without forcing the user to mouseover. It is especially important to clarify the incarnation of the Doctor on pages where more than one Doctor is discussed.

Because "pipe switching" to "the Doctor" was a widespread practice for six years prior to this ruling, readers should be aware that they may find instances of the usage on various parts of the wiki during the changeover period.

K9
By way of forum consensus reached after several months of debate, the name of K9 shall usually be rendered without a hyphen in page titles, shall always be rendered without a hyphen in category titles, and is the preferred way of rendering the name in the body of articles.
 * ''See /K9 naming convention/ for more details.

In-universe
If something is in-universe, or is described as such, it belongs to the Doctor Who universe exclusively and not in the real world. Characters are for example in-universe, but the actors who play them are not in-universe. Exceptions are persons, places, and organisations which appear or are referred to in the Doctor Who universe which also exist(ed) in the real world, i.e., William Shakespeare, The Beatles, the United Kingdom. Pseudohistory is an integral part of in-universe treatment of canon material. Information given from a "real world" perspective (i.e. notes about the creation of a character, or actors, or other real-world trivia) should appear under a Behind the scenes subheading.

In case an entry might detail a subject of importance both to the real world and to the Doctor Who universe, you may create a Real world section in the article, such as the one on Glasgow. The second section could have such articles as cast and crew born in Glasgow and location shooting for various stories shot there. Another example is years, months and specific days which are divided into 'Doctor Who Universe' events and 'Real world' events, see 1963 for an example.

Out-of-universe
Out-of-Universe refers to the perspective in which an article is written; it is the opposite of in-universe. Something written from an out-of-universe (OOU) perspective is written from a real life point of view. It will refer, for example, to real life publications, actors, authors, events, and so on, acknowledging that its subject is fictional. In contrast, an in-universe perspective will strive for verisimilitude; that is, it will be written as though the author existed within the Doctor Who universe. Articles about any in-universe things, such as characters, vehicles, terminology, or species, should always be written from an in universe perspective. If a section in the article is not, such as the listing of a character's published appearances or behind the scenes details, it should be tagged as such. In contrast, articles about books, movies, games, or other real life Doctor Who material should obviously be written from an out-of-universe perspective, but should still be noted as such. Basically, in-universe articles should never refer to Doctor Who by name, or any other real life things such as publications, actors, or the like.

Use of material from Wikipedia
Use of material from articles on Wikipedia, up to and including copying of articles on Wikipedia (known as "forking"), is permissible (though not desireable see below) if the following guidelines are observed:
 * Such material should be properly credited in the External links section with the Wikipedia citation template, whose text would read:


 * "This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at "Name of Wikipedia article you used." The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the TARDIS Index File, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).

This gives proper credit to the original authors of the article and maintains compliance with Wikipedia's terms for use of material on the Wikipedia site.


 * Wikipedia articles on fictional persons, places, things, or events are written from an "Out-of-universe" perspective. Such articles should be edited to conform with the "In-universe" perspective used on our wiki. The article on Liz Shaw should not begin, "Liz Shaw is a fictional character on the British science-fiction television programme Doctor Who." (Being considerably more familiar with Doctor Who than Wikipedia's more general audience, we pretty much already know this.) Care should be taken not to import errors that may exist in Wikipedia articles.

On this wiki we are attempting to create a unique encyclopaedia. It is preferable that content for this wiki does not rely heavily on Wikipedia in order to create a different and individual from the main Wikipedia site.

Headings
Use the  (heading) markup for headings, not the   (bold) markup. Example:



which produces:


 * This is a heading

If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.


 * Capitalise the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lower case.
 * Avoid links within headings.
 * Avoid overuse of sub-headings.

Usage and spelling
Though the readers and editors of the TARDIS Index File speak many varieties of English, we prefer standard British English spelling, punctuation, and word usage. This is the variety of English used in the Doctor Who series and first printings of most primary sources, as well as the fact Doctor Who is a United Kingdom-based franchise, where this form of English is used. In the event that an article (or category) uses spelling, punctuation, or word usage typical of American English, or some other form of the language besides British English, contributors who are native users of or otherwise fluent in British English standards reserve the right to edit articles to conform to those standards.

A frequently noticed example of British English vs. American English involves words that end in "or" vs. "our". In British English, for example, colour is spelled with "our", whereas American English spells it "color". The former is the preferred style.

Another noticeable usage different between the use of British English on this wiki and American English is our use of Organisation rather than Organization.

In keeping with the aforementioned standard, dates should place the number first, e.g. 23rd November, not November 23.

If the title of an article differs in different varieties of English, the British, or English English, title should be the article title, with alternate names being used as redirects (for example, Target Novelization redirects to Target Novelisation).

Please use complete sentences. "'An Unearthly Child' first broadcast" is not a complete sentence.

Tense
With the exception of story article pages, articles tagged with the current event tag and ongoing concerns (such as real world articles about cast and crew) the past tense is preferred in the main article text (this includes on all Timeline pages). All in-universe articles should be in past tense.

The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the articles on the TARDIS wiki are presented as historical recordings that have been pieced together from scraps of information left over from the early Universe, and various eras of history. As such, all details pertaining to this history have not yet been uncovered, and more information may be added at a later date. Keeping articles written in past tense provides consistency and flavour. Secondly, the Doctor may travel into the past, the present, or the future, but from his personal perspective, any events which have been previously recorded are now in his own personal past, regardless of where in the universal timeline they may fall. Writing in-universe articles in past tense relates the timeline of the Doctor Who universe with both our and his own perspective.


 * Example: Martha Jones was an inhabitant of Earth. Rather than Martha Jones is an inhabitant of Earth.

Avoid phrases like "His ultimate fate is unknown" or "what happened to the ship after that is a mystery" unless it is an actual plot point in a story. Any information that is not known is simply the extent of knowledge, it does not need to be stated.

Do not jump back and forth between tenses; this is confusing.

Do not include theories, speculation or hypothesis in any articles. You can do so in The Howling a forum specifically for the community to do this.


 * See also Citation - Articles on living people

Capital letters
The article "the" in names like "the Doctor" and "the Master" should not be capitalised (unless, of course, they begin a sentence). The articles "a", "an", and "the" only should be capitalised in titles and proper nouns. "The first broadcast of an Unearthly Child" should be written: "The first broadcast of An Unearthly Child."

Human
Following consensus in the forum, it was demonstrated that the vast majority of instances of the word human in Doctor Who prose fiction aren't capitalised. We recognize that other sapient species are almost always capitalised, and that there are very occasional capitalisations of human in Doctor Who prose, as in some parts of DWN: Doctor Who and the Ark in Space However, human isn't typically capitalised in every major range of Doctor Who fiction, including NSA, MA, BNA, NA, EDA, PDA, and even most DWN novels.

Because this rule was instituted on 27th February 2011, about six years after the wiki opened — and it had previously been the rule to capitalise human — you may occasionally encounter instances of Human. These should be fixed.

Put simply: human should only be capitalised when it begins a sentence.

Bold type
The article name, when first mentioned, should be bold, bolded and in italicised if it is a story title.

Story names
Names of stories should be:
 * Capitalised
 * Italicised

e.g.;
 * An Unearthly Child
 * Everything Changes

This means that they should be italicised everywhere, infoboxen, source citations — even page titles. To change a page title into italics, please use title. Generally, the easiest way to italicise a page title would be to place the following on a page:

However, in the case of disambiguated page names, you'll have to do something slightly more sophisticated and italicise everything that's not in parentheses:

Spacing and formatting

 * Generally there should be no more than one blank space between paragraphs, sections, etc. In most cases, a single carriage return is sufficient.
 * A single space after the end of a sentence is sufficient; the practice of adding two spaces after a period is not applicable to Internet.
 * Do not indent paragraphs.
 * Generally speaking, HTML coding is not necessary, as Wikia has its own coding for such things as italics, bold, links, etc. Some coding for things such as forced line breaks (i.e. the HTML code "br") may be used if the Wikia coding isn't allowing a section (like a chart or an infobox) to format correctly. Inserting HTML coding such as "ul" and "li" will more often than not completely mess up the formatting of a page or infobox or generate error messages.
 * Never underline text as this will confuse users with browsers configured to signify hotlinks with underlining. Likewise, never use colour text.

Image use
Use of images is encouraged on articles, with a few caveats (detailed below).

Images that should not be used in any articles include; amateur 'spoiler photos' and images that have been highly image-edited or had an overlay of text or colour placed over them.

In-universe articles
For in-universe articles images of an in-universe style can be used such as; screenshots, comic strip scans or suitably cropped images from novel or audio covers. These should be sourced as being screen shots.

Promotional images that have been specially photographed, posed or photo-manipulated to be used as a promotional image should not be used as the characters are often in a pose that is not of an in-universe style. Images that fall within this definition include images such as wallpapers that are available for download from a production company's website (such as the BBC).

Out of universe and story articles
For story articles promotional images also should not be used, instead a screenshot that captures a poignant scene from the story should be used.

Real world articles may use practically any other relevant images that have been properly sourced and tagged with the appropriate copyright tag.

Quotations
Quotations are not encyclopedic in and of themselves and therefore should not be used as headers to articles or at the top of sub-headings within articles. Quotations can be used within the text body of an article to emphasis a certain point or highlight a certain issue of the article's focus, often a quote can explain things better than we can ourselves.

For example:
 * Vicki described Time as "like space, although a dimension of itself, also has dimensions of its own." (DW: The Space Museum)

Real world articles and Behind the scenes sections
The Quote template and quotes may be used within Real world articles or behind the scenes sections (including on occasion as headers), as quotes from the real world often are sourced from a wide variety of sources, that are often handled better by the template.

For example see the quote template used within this Doctor Who (2009) article.

Links

 * There is no need to link a keyword every time it occurs in an article; this is redundant. The one exception is if the keyword occurs under two or more different headings, as some readers may only read one section of an article rather than the entire page. Avoid overlinking: mundane, everyday terms do not need to be linked (even though this is commonplace in Wikipedia), unless there is a specific TARDIS Index File article. For example, restaurant generates a redlink because there's no need at present for a Doctor Who-related article on the subject, and thus a wikilink is unnecessary. However as there is an article on DVD, wikilinking that word is OK.


 * In some cases, however, it may be desirable to link to a specific Wikipedia article. This is primarily for topics such as TV shows, movies, individuals, and technical terms that otherwise do not have their own TARDIS wiki articles. In this case, the link should be formed this way: Angelina Jolie . However always check to make sure there isn't actually an article on the subject on this wiki, for example Star Trek. As noted above, however, mundane terms do not need links, so there is no need to link to the Wikipedia article on, once again, "restaurant" as most readers will not need an explanation of the term.


 * Using links to redirect readers to another page is only necessary if a related topic cannot be covered in the original article without digressing too far from the article's main topic. There is no need, for example, to place the synopsis, viewer ratings, or uncredited cast for a television story on separate pages and redirect readers to those pages. This can contribute to too many red links in an article if those pages do not yet exist, and can be annoying.

In-universe articles
Telling readers where a statement can be verified is important. It helps to focus articles and keeps the details in an article to only that which actually appeared in the various Doctor Who narratives. Don't assume that your readers have the same level of knowledge about the Whoniverse as you do. Cite often, cite accurately. Format your citations according to these guidelines:
 * When citing an episode, novel, book, audio drama, webcast, comic or any other story use brackets, the proper prefix for the series and then the name of the episode, in italics and linked, e.g:
 * (DW: An Unearthly Child)
 * (NA: Timewyrm: Revelation)
 * (TW: Everything Changes)


 * When citing an in-universe website, use the WEB prefix, the name of the website in italics and the website address shown using a piped link, e.g:
 * (WEB: torchwood.org.uk ), which appears as: (WEB: torchwood.org.uk)


 * If you encounter a statement that obviously needs a citation, but you don't have the time or knowledge to correct it, type, which produces:
 * On this wiki, it is difficult to avoid using "weasel words" like "many", "often" and "sometimes". The nature of an internally inconsistent universe like Doctor Who's usually makes concise, absolute statements untrue.  For instance, there are many occasions when the Doctor appears have a binary vascular system, but there are a few where he does not.  Weasel words can be made more accurate by remembering to balance them with an appropriate number of citations.  In general, if a sentence implies that something occurred multiple times, then there should multiple citations given.  For instance, if you write, "The Doctor often thwarted the plans of the Master", then you should give several story names to give a sense that "often" is an accurate term.  Some other words which trigger the need for multiple citations are "frequently", "various", and "regularly" — as well as the simple use of numerals ("the Doctor was known to have gone there three times").
 * Should you come across a sentence that seems to need more citations, but you don't have the time or the knowledge to correct it, type, which produces:

Behind the scenes
Behind the scenes or Real world subsections within in-universe articles should be cited using the same method as out of universe articles. See below for more information.

Out of universe articles
Telling readers a statement that can be verified is important. For out of universe articles (those about the Real World or Behind the scenes) we use the same system as Wikipedia; Footnotes. The sources must have reference tags around the (see also Wikipedia:Citing sources for more info). Or The Dark Dimension and Gothic stories for examples of correct citation within articles. A section at the base of the article entitled 'Footnotes' must also be placed with (this will collect the cited sources at the base of the article).


 * Please use 'Footnotes' rather than 'References' as this term is associated with the in-universe References section.

If while editing you come across a cited piece of information which has no source you can place the tag beside it which will display the Fact tag like this;, which states a source needs to be cited.

Rumours
Rumours may be added to articles concerning yet to be broadcast stories/series', these should only be placed within the 'Rumours' section of the article. Users must ensure the rumours are cited with a source so that they may be verified by other readers and editors.

Unsourced rumours should be removed.

Articles on living people
Although all articles should be as accurate as possible, special care must be taken with regards to articles on people that are currently alive, as issues such as libel may arise if claims are made without sources being given, or unnecessary rumours sparked. A prime example occurred in a late-1980s encyclopaedia of dolls that was published in North America, and which, in a section discussing Tom Baker, make the unsourced claim that Baker died of a drug overdose in 1982. As it happened, this was an unrelated actor of the same name. If you choose to include information of a potentially controversial nature, a source must be given, and preferably a "reliable source" such as an interview, newspaper or magazine article, etc. Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database, not being peer reviewed, are not considered reliable sources. Nor are online (and, occasionally, print) sources that site Wikipedia and IMDb as their main sources.

Although this Wikia site is not considered part of Wikipedia, it is nonetheless helpful to review the Wikipedia Biographies of Living Persons policy. If you see an unsourced claim or comment regarding a living person, if a source cannot be located, it is best to play it safe and remove that material from the article.