User:Mini-mitch/Sandbox Three/Layout

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 a subject which should be italicized, such as a book or episode title, then the topic name should be bolded and italicized, as confirmed by a recent forum discussion.

It might help at this point to look at a couple of lead beginnings. Happy Endings was the 50th novel in the Virgin New Adventures series. ..
 * 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.
 * produces:
 * Tom Baker portrayed the Fourth Doctor, amassing more episodes than any other actor who played the Doctor

Leads are vital parts of articles. Good, interesting leads draw the reader into an article. Leads also save readers' time, by allowing them to quickly decide whether they're reading about the topic for which they were searching. Articles lacking leads can be easily identified, since they usually have no body text above the automatically generated table of contents.

Leads can be of highly varying lengths, as some topics are simply more notable than others. In some cases, as at DWA 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.

Whatever one's views are on the "perfect" length of a lead, no matter whether the article is in- or out-of-universe, every article must have a lead.

Lists

 * If you need help creating lists, see T:LIST MARK.

Lists, both ordered and unordered, are easily created using wiki markup. However, ease of creation does not mean that they should be over used. Especially within in-universe articles, it's often better to find a way to present the material in normal paragraphs. This isn't, of course, to say that lists are forbidden, but most truly good are comprised of ordinary prose, not bullet points.

If you do find that the best way to present a particular bit of information is with a list, however, there is one rule you must observe:


 * Pictures can't go to the left of lists.

A picture visually breaks up the straight left margin of the list. Since the whole reason for making a list is that straight edge, there's no padding to the left of the bullets (or numbers) that create lists. Thus a picture put to the left of a list will crowd itself over the top of the bullets.


 * Item 1
 * Item 2
 * 1) The picture crashes into numbers, too.
 * Item 4
 * Item 5
 * It gets really ugly if you have a long list
 * See how the list is now going back to the left margin?

In-universe
All in-universe articles should be structured as follows: For more details as to what each section of an article should contain, see the Layout guide.
 * 1) Main body of article
 * 2) See also
 * 3) Behind the scenes
 * 4) External links
 * 5) Category

Out-of-Universe articles on reference works

 * For more information, see the individual format guides, below:


 * 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.