Tardis:Tardis Manual

A manual of style is a document created by a publishing entity to ensure that all of its writers are working to a common standard. They are particularly necessary when working in the English language, as there are many different types of written English used throughout the world. A manual of style typically strives to settle matters of debate amongst writers by, in many cases, arbitrarily deciding questions like
 * When shall we italicise words?
 * How shall we name articles?
 * Shall we generally use British, American, Canadian, or Australian English?

Note that a manual of style can answer any question like this in a way that might contradict one's own sense of "proper" English usage. Therefore, you should not assume, even if you are an extremely advanced English writer, than you understand the rules that we have chosen to use. Please make sure that you read this document thoroughly if you intend to edit with us. Also, be aware that the rules laid down here do occasionally come up for community review at the Panopticon, a forum dedicated to discussing the way the wiki is run. Indeed, this manual is certainly a living document. It has been locked only to prevent vandalism — not to discourage change. Please post your suggestions for how to improve it at the Panopticon, so that a wide range of users can discuss your proposal.

Except where a more detailed policy page exists, the manual of style should be considered the final word on any matter it addresses. If you don't agree with what it says, please don't blatantly disregard it. Instead, please start a discussion in the forum to change it.

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

Wikification
Wikis are encyclopaedias — with a difference. Using a standard print encyclopaedia, a reader who encounters a word that baffles or intrigues her must physically turn to another page to find out more about that word. Indeed, it's possible she'll even have to bring out an entirely different volume from her library. With a wiki, we are able to wikify text, allowing the reader to be a click away from obtaining more information. At its most basic, wikifying a word means enclosing it in brackets, so as to create a link to another article. It's done like this: glasses

To increase the utility of this wiki, every unique noun in an article that can be wikified should be wikified. By clear community consensus, there's no such thing as an article that's "too small" or "too insignificant". If a word appears in a narrative this wiki covers, an article about it is allowable.

Thus, when writing articles, you should never assume "there isn't an aritcle about that on this wiki". Test words by starting with two brackets and the first few letters of your word. The auto-suggest feature will pop up and reveal whether we have an article with that name. For instance, if you type: [[gla you'll get a ton of words beginning with "gla". Click on the word you want, and it's instantly wikified.

That said, it is possible to "over-wikify". By way of long-standing forum consensus, it is recommended that you limit the number of times you wikify the same word in a single article. Generally, it is preferred that you link to only the first instance of a word in each section of an article. If the article is not sectionalised, but has large, multi-sentence paragraphs, then wikify the word once a paragraph. To give a practical example, we don't want the Doctor linked every single time we see it, but we do want it linked enough so that if we scroll down in an article we can still find the occasional link.

Should you find that an article does not yet exist, you are positively encouraged to create a redlink like this. Some people think of redlinks as ugly or pointless. In truth, they're requests — or, if you like, links to future articles. They say to readers, "We know we should have an article about this topic, but we don't, yet." When a redlink is created, it is added to the list at Special:WantedPages. This will then increase the chances that the page will be created, because some editors use WantedPages as a way to prioritise their work. The more redlinks that are created for a word, the higher up on the list it will go, further increasing the chances that it will be created.

If there should be an article about something, it is better to create a redlink for it than to not link it at all.

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.

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.

Naming of articles
This wiki has some rules regarding how articles should be named. Probably the two most basic are: and
 * 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.
 * Unless the name of the article contains a proper noun, only the first word should be capitalised.

Some other rules that apply to all types of article are:


 * Ampersands (&) should never replace the word "and", unless the credit actually contains one, or the title actually uses one. For instance, the ampersands in Northwest Imaging & FX and Love & Monsters are fine, but Mad Dogs & Englishmen is incorrect, since the title is Mad Dogs and Englishmen.  (The deciding forum discussion is here.)
 * Article names cannot contain the characters |, #, <, >, {, }, [, 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.
 * It is technically possible for article titles to contain single quotation marks, and it usually works without incident. After all, a single quotation mark is simply an apostrophe.  However, it's recommended that single quotation marks be replaced by double quotation marks, especially when the article title needs to be italicised.  This is because the single quotation mark has a meaning in wiki markup, whereas the double quotation mark does not.  This recommendation also maintains consistency with the general ruling to preference double quotation marks, below.

Serials
For television serials, 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 episode "The Cave of Skulls" and the serial's production title of 100,000 BC should redirect to An Unearthly Child. The notion of allowing redirects from Hartnell-era episode names to the parent serial was granted by way of a forum discussion — one that simultaneously rejected the creation of full articles about Hartnell episodes.

This discussion further stipulated that Hartnell-era episodes should link to the plot sections of serial pages. For instance, "Dangerous Journey" redirects not just to Planet of Giants, but specifically to the section Planet of Giants. That way, readers are taken directly to the part of the article that relates to the named episode.

The exception to this way of doing things is Children of Earth. According to a hotly contested forum decision, COE is considered the name of series 3 of Torchwood, and the individual episodes are to be given their own pages. Children of Earth is thus handled differently to the usual practice with serialised stories in the "classic" era of Doctor Who, or with The End of Time, in which individual episodes do not get their own, separate articles.

General guidelines
By forum consensus, 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. 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 named "Amy Pond", but should begin with:
 * "Amelia Jessica Pond, more commonly called Amy Pond, was a companion of ..."

Both forum and talk page discussions agree that characters who get married do not automatically have their articles renamed to assume the last name of their spouse. The clearest example of this is Gwen Cooper, who's never seriously referred to as "Gwen Williams". But it also applies to Amy Pond, especially since an explicit joke is made about the matter in the script of The Big Bang. Until the broadcast of Death of the Doctor, Jo Grant's article remained set at her maiden name. However, it has since been changed to Jo Jones, as the character, in-narrative, made it clear that she went by the name "Jones". The case of "Martha Smith-Jones" is ambiguous, because she only gets the name in end credits and other out-of-universe sources. "Donna Temple-Noble", however, is made explicit by Wilf in The End of Time.

Honourifics
Honourifics such as Mr, Mrs, Dr, Professor, religious ranks, or military ranks should not be included in article titles about the person themselves.

For example, a character such as Winfold Hobbes may have been listed in the credits as "Professor Hobbes". Therefore, per our rules on crew listings, that's how his name should appear on the Midnight page. However, his full name, without the title "Professor", is used to title his article.

Things named for people with honourifics, such as saints, should include the honourific, as with St Jude's Hospital or St John's Monastery.

Note, too, that our spelling policy requires British spellings. This has an impact on honourifics, in that the British do not use a period after any honourific that begins and ends with the same letters as the full word. Thus, because doctor begins with a d and ends with an r — and because saint begins with an s and ends with a t — the usual British rendering of the honourifics are Dr and St, sans periods. Thus, this is the spelling pattern we will attempt to enforce on this wiki, even though Dr. Who is commonly seen in the Doctor Who end credits of the 1960s and 1970s.

Finally, 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.

Exactly one character, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, shall have a redirect on his honourific. Although there are indeed other Brigadiers in the DWU, only he shall be the Brigadier.

Characters with only one name
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.

According to a forum ruling, if a character who needs to be disambiguated has appeared in multiple stories or episodes, use the first story or episode as the disambiguation term. For instance, Nancy from The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances is at Nancy (The Empty Child).


 * The concept of disambiguation is covered in greater detail by our disambiguation policy.

Magazine issues
Outside of this wiki, the usual way of referring to the 273rd issue of a magazine is to write it thus: [Magazine name] #273. This nomenclature is denied us in the MediaWiki software that underpins this wiki, however. 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. So while 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 this technical condition, there is a need for magazine issues to be named in a certain way. The rule is this:


 * Take the indicia title of the majority of issues in the run, make an exact acronym of it, then add the issue number.

Hence, the 273rd issue of Doctor Who Magazine becomes DWM 273. And because the name is based on the name in the majority of issues, we have DWM 12, not DWW 12. Easy.

What's perhaps less clear is that acronyms don't necessarily match our prefix system. For instance, Torchwood, the series, is prefixed here as TW. However, the 12th issue of Torchwood Magazine is TM 12, since TW isn't actually an acronym of Torchwood.

Also, if there are instances where the acronym of the publication's title wouldn't be clear, the two digits of the year of first publication are appended. For example, the American Doctor Who comic book was a publication that began in 1984. To abbreviate to DW would be ambiguous as there are several American comic books with the title Doctor Who. Calling it "DWUS" would likewise be ambiguous, because. . . there are several American comic books with the title Doctor Who. Thus, we have to go to the only thing that truly distinguishes the publications: the year. The 15th issue of the Marvel US Doctor Who comic is therefore DW84 15.

Astronomical objects
Some authors use Roman numerals when naming astronomical objects: Metebelis III, Gorgol XIII, Minyos II, Gallifrey XII. Others use Arabic numerals: 4-X-Alpha-4, Star system 690, Nebulax 4, Algol 7. Still others use the English word for a numeral: Gallifraxion Four, Boojus Five, Beta Two. A few even use multiple numbering systems: 16 Alpha Leonis One.

According to an early forum ruling, editors should make no attempt to invent a standard nomenclature. Rather, they should use whatever numbering system the author used. In the case of performed stories, where no novelisation or published scripts exist, editors are freer to use their best judgment. For this reason there has occasionally been some redirection between the different numbering systems, as with Arcateen V and Arcateen 5. Initially only spoken aloud, Arcateen 5 was moved to Arcateen V after REF: The Torchwood Archives established the usage of Roman numerals.

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 ordinal 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 do not pipe switch 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.

Romana
By way of forum consensus, it was decided that this wiki shall consistently refer to the Romana played by Mary Tamm as "Romana I"; the one played by Lalla Ward as "Romana II", and the incarnation depicted in The Shadows of Avalon and other BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures as "Romana III".

We fully recognise that she's never known within a narrative by these names. Nor do we suggest that Romana I is necessarily the first incarnation of Romana. However, the use of the Roman numeral nomenclature is unchallenged by a suitable in-universe alternative.

The Monk
It has been agreed that the predominant way of referring to the Time Lord adversary first encountered in The Time Meddler shall be "the Monk", not "Mortimus", a name later revealed in a novel. Nevertheless, a redirect at Mortimus was allowed when that debate was closed because it's a valid alternate name.

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.

Years
For technical reasons, the names of articles about years cannot contain commas. timeline and its associated templates require "clean" numbers to function properly. This is one instance in which the argument, "We should name the article exactly how it is in the primary source" fails. So: 100000000000000 must be the name of the article, but a more visually-friendly 100,000,000,000,000 may be created as a redirect for use within the body of articles. That said, editors may never use a comma when referring to a year that is shorter than five digits.

As was agreed through consensus, appendages which establish a year's position relative to year 0 shall be given in terms of "AD" and "BC". This is the overwhelmingly dominant usage within the DWU. BCE and CE may be more "politically correct" because they have no religious overtones, but such designations are very rarely used within the DWU. The Doctor himself has been heard on several occasions to use "BC" and "AD" within televised episodes, making their validity in the DWU hard to refute.

Dates
Following a community discussion, the names of articles having to do with dates shall be in cardinal format — as seen in 25 December. However, redirects shall be maintained for the ordinal format, as in the case of 25th December.

Since the general goal on this wiki is to preference British English, this rule derives from a perception by the community that placing the day in front of the month is the "most British" way of handling dates. Additionally, the forum discussion stipulated that the cardinal form was simply used more often than the ordinal form in modern British English.

The cardinal form was also cited as being easier to use from a technical, coding standpoint.

That said, the ruling only applies to the names of the articles, and not to links made to those articles.

There is no consensus which prohibits other formats being used within the body of articles through pipe switching, since it can easily be proved that the British use "1 January", "January 1" and "January 1st" in various circumstances. It would be advisable, however, to use the same format within the confines of a single article.

Cast and crew lists
When writing television story pages, cast and crew lists should make an effort to replicate the cast and crew lists as they appear on episodes as first transmitted. They should never contain information which only appears on IMDb or any other secondary reference material, as the accuracy of such information is often disputable. In the case of 21st century television, we preference the credits as broadcast over the credits as seen on home video, because we don't want to burden our editors with the responsibility of having to buy home video versions of the stories. We need to choose a standard that all editors will use, and choosing the one that is free means that more editors will be able to comply to the standard.

Crew lists should also not contain information which is widely known to be true but isn't in the credits — such as the fact that Mervyn Pinfield was the associate producer of Planet of Giants, or that Terrance Dicks effectively wrote most of The Seeds of Death.

Cast
As confirmed by forum discussion, cast lists shall give the name of the character, as listed in the credits seen on first transmission of an episode. The character name shall be displayed exactly as in those credits, and in the order seen on original transmission. Thus, if characters are credited with only a first name, only that name should appear in the credits, linked by pipe trick to the full article name. For example, in the credits for The Hungry Earth, the character of Mo Northover shall be rendered thus:
 * Mo
 * Any actors credited on subsequent transmission, or in home video releases, that were not originally credited shall be placed in a special subsection which alerts viewers to that fact.

Crew
Crew lists should equally use the names precisely as they are credited in the episode in question. This may, in some cases, necessitate the creation of multiple redirects to a single person, such as is the case with Heddi-Joy Taylor-Welch, who has been credited a variety of different ways during her tenure on Doctor Who. Below the line crew members often are victims of typos, or are more inclined to change their names upon marriage, than above the line personnel. Thus we need to make an effort to include their names exactly as credited, and sort out the discrepancies with redirects.

Likewise, some individuals have professional qualifications after their name. These qualifications, whether they be CDG, MD, BSC, ASC or whatever, should follow their name. It's perfectly acceptable to make a redirect to the un-qualified name so as to make linking easier. For instance, Andy Pryor CDG links to Andy Pryor. The acronym should be punctuated precisely as it is in the credits. For instance, on Escape to LA, John Frank Levey, CSA, but Hunter M. Via, A.C.E.. Meanwhile, Ernie Vincze was regularly credited as Ernie Vincze BSC, no commas, no full stops.

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 wholesale copying of them (known as "forking") — is allowed, if highly discouraged. In some situations, it is completely forbidden.

When allowed
Wikipedia articles may be copied to this wiki provided that the article is:
 * ultimately within the real world super-category
 * wikipedia is placed at the bottom of the page that uses such material. 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.

In other words, if the article is about a story, a person associated with the making of the Doctor Who franchise, reference books, filmmaking terminology, companies that provide something to do with the Doctor Who franchise, or the like, properly-credited forking is allowed.

That said, '''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.' Use of Wikipedia material should best be though of as a temporary'' measure.

When not allowed
Wikipedia articles about in-universe material should never be copied wholesale from Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles on fictional persons, places, things, or events are written from an "Out-of-universe" perspective. They in no way comply with this Manual of Style. They also wouldn't have sufficient wikification for our purposes, because we have far more articles about in-universe topics than Wikipedia does.

To exemplify the difficulty, let's examine just the lead of the article Liz Shaw:


 * Dr. Elizabeth "Liz" Shaw is a fictional character played by Caroline John in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs. A civilian member of UNIT - United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (later retitled: UNified Intelligence Taskforce for the new series), an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats, she was the  companion of the Third Doctor for the 1970 season.

Really, none of this is usable to us.
 * It's in present tense; we need past.
 * We don't mention actors in the main body of articles. This gives Caroline John in the first sentence.
 * In-universe articles should generally make no reference to the programme name in the main body. Here we have "long -running British science fiction series Doctor Who" right out of the gate.
 * This makes a distinction between old and new series, which our in-universe articles don't.
 * This takes a mile and a half to explain what UNIT is; we would just leave it at a link to UNIT.
 * Wikipedia often has different titles than we do. Hence their links to companion and alien and science fiction don't work here.

As you can see, just the lead of this article would have to be so heavily rewritten to comply with our Manual of Style that we might as well just write a new article.

Thus, the importation of articles about in-universe subjects is forbidden.

Historical use of wikipedia on this wiki
In the first couple of years of this wiki's life, rules on Wikipedia forking were initially non-existent. They then became at best lax. You will therefore still find some character articles, particularly of characters from lesser-known spin-off media, that were taken from Wikipedia. This should not be seen as reason to continue such practices. Our goal is the complete rewriting of such articles. Also, many articles are actually now so different from their Wikipedia origins that the wikipedia template is no longer required.

Headings
An article's sectional headings are best created through the wiki code markup involving the use of the equal symbol (=). Use of proper wiki syntax for headings is preferred over trying to create headings manually through the use of emboldened text. "Proper" wiki syntax follows this format:



The results of this are hard to show here without actually creating a subhead for this article. Because of this, we direct your attention to our headline test page for a more thorough overview of the coding. For now, suffice to say that there are six levels of sectioning available, each denoted by an increasing number of "equal" symbols (=). Note that immediately surrounding the text of your section header with spaces is extremely helpful to wiki maintenance. Thus: === Hello === is preferred over ===Hello===

The first level, using just one equal symbol

should never be used. It actually represents the level of the article title itself. It produces a header which is as big as the article title, it does not produce a sectional "edit" button, and it cannot be linked to.

Benefits of using proper headings
By using proper wiki coding for sections, we gain a number of benefits over "creating" false subheads through text bolding:
 * If your article has a minimum of four section headings, a table of contents is automatically generated.
 * Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set in "My preferences".
 * Most properly created section headlines produce an "edit section" button, allowing for just that section to be edited.
 * Words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches.
 * Sub-sections of the article get progressively smaller headings. This visual consistency allows the reader to "know where they are" within the article just by the size of the font. It also allows the reader to know how the section they're reading relates to other sections.

Linking by heading
Headings allow for linkage directly to a specific section of an article. For example, this syntax will allow you to link directly to this section of this article: Tardis:Manual of Style Note, however, that this is not the same as Tardis:Manual of Style though both will produce blue-links, and therefore appear to be valid links. It's important to capitalise the subhead precisely as it is in the article. Additionally, the article in question must be the root article name. In other words, linking to sections through a redirect won't work. For example, if you wanted to link to the synopsis on the page The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, you have to type The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve Even though The Massacre is by far the more common name of the story, and a valid redirect exists there, the following just won't work: The Massacre

Sentence case
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. This style is called "sentence case" and it is the stylistic preference of this wiki. You may, however, wonder why it matters to use sentence case if the headers are in uppercase.

Well, there are many reasons. The main reason is because the uppercase headers that now appear on the site are the result of a single command in the CSS code. In other words, the headers aren't actually in upper case; they're merely styled in uppercase. Should we wish to "re-style" the wiki, it'll be important that the headers be typed by you in proper sentence case.

Another good reason is because of the sectional linking discussed above. Sectional linking is case-sensitive, so editors should be able to count upon the fact that headers are in sentence case so that they can reliably link to sections.

Therefore the following examples should be kept in mind:

Other matters

 * Avoid links within headings.
 * Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
 * Section headings should be succinct
 * Section headings should simply describe the contents of the section. Imaginative wording or puns aren't disallowed, but they might be edited to something less "creative" unless their meaning is very clear.

Usage and spelling

 * ''Specific spelling guidelines are noted in our spelling policy. A quick summary of the most common spelling mistakes can be found at our spelling cheat card.

Type of English
Though the readers and editors of this wiki speak many varieties of English, several forum discussions have confirmed that we will use British English spelling, punctuation, and word usage whilst editing articles. Contributors who are native users of or otherwise fluent in British English standards reserve the right to edit articles to conform to those standards.

Nevertheless, if you appear to be making no effort whatsoever to edit in British English, after having been asked not to do so, your editing privileges may be revoked.

Exceptions
Though British English is preferred, there are some instances where American English may predominate.

Quotation marks/inverted commas
The use of quotation marks shall favour the American usage, as it's less ambiguous for the MediaWiki software underpinning the wiki. Use double quotation marks (") surrounding single ones ('), even though most Doctor Who fiction uses the precise opposite format.

The reason for this ruling is simple. Since the single inverted comma has an actual meaning in everyday wiki markup, it's all too easy for it to throw off the formatting of a sentence. Indeed, we even have to have a special template, ', to counteract the problem. Thus, even though it goes against years of schooling for some of us, it's best to use double-quotations on the outside, then follow with single-quotations only as needed.

Products
In the case of products aimed at a foreign market, their spellings and word choices should predominate. IDW Publishing titles should always reflect American spellings, as should anything to do with the new Doctor Who Insider magazine. Similarly, things in the DWU which take place in other countries, should not be "converted" to a British spelling or word choice just to satisfy the above general policy. If, for instance, a future episode of Torchwood should be called "Analyzing Miss Cooper", or IDW were to publish a story called, "A Few of my Favorite Things", there should be no effort to Anglicise the spellings of "Favorite" or "Analyzing".

This can also apply to British-made products that nevertheless refer to foreign items or settings. Don't, for instance, try to Anglicise "Pearl Harbor" or the film, The Color of Money, or the like, should they be mentioned in a Doctor Who story.

Full sentences
Complete sentences — that is, sentences containing at least a subject and a verb — are required. A full sentence is not something that starts with a capital letter and ends with a period or full stop. The following are examples of incomplete sentences that have been found, at one time or another, on the wiki:

Exceptions to this rule are few.
 * If you are directly quoting, and the original quotation is a sentence fragment, and you indicate that you are quoting, you may reproduce it.
 * If you are making a simple list of words or titles, a complete sentence is not necessary on each line, because the list is likely to be a part of a preceding full sentence. For instance, if you said,
 * William Hartnell appeared in the following serials:
 * and then proceeded to give a list of those serials, the list is effectively a dependent clause of prepositional phrase "in the following serials". You therefore don't need a full sentence on each line of the list.

Tenses
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 recognise 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 27 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'' is the preferred form. The word should only be capitalised when it begins a sentence and in the infobox..'''

Bold text
The article name, when first mentioned, should be in bold text. If a story title, it should also be italicised. Alternate names for the topic should also be bolded. In most cases, any alternate name which is emboldened should also get a redirect.

Italics
Pursuant to vigorous forum debate, we have decided that all story names shall be rendered in italics. This goes contrary to standard English rules, which generally hold that shorter works of fiction would be enclosed in quotation marks. Nevertheless, it was felt easier for our editors to consistently italicise all stories, regardless of medium or length, and all BBC Wales episodes'''.

There are also other things which may be italicised, a list of which is given below.

The biggest exception to the "always italicise" rule is that Hartnell-era episode titles, like "The Cave of Skulls" should be enclosed in quotation marks to clearly indicate when a Hartnell episode, rather than a full serial, is being referenced. This is particularly important because some Hartnell serials, like An Unearthly Child, have episodes of the same name.

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

e.g.
 * Tooth and Claw
 * 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:

By putting  at the end of that sentence, what we're saying is that, within the body of the serial known as Spearhead from Space, you will find a scene where a guy named "Dr Henderson" puzzles over a TARDIS key. Since that actually happens in Spearhead, this sentence is allowed to remain in our database.

The problem is that sometimes we kind of remember scenes being in one serial, but in fact they're in another. Or sometimes we use fan sites comprised of badly-researched statements incorrectly ascribed to a particular story. Worse, some fan sites give a citation for a particular story, but fail to make obvious that this assertion is based on speculation involving another story. (This, incidentally, is why we don't think fan sites are valid sources.)

It's absolutely vital that you check every statement you make against the story you're citing. Some good questions to ask yourself include:


 * Am I going off my own research into the story?
 * If asked — and given a few minutes, cause me memory's goin' — could I definitely point to a page, episode or time code when the event I'm citing happened within the story?
 * Could I insert a direct quotation from the story into my sentence?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", you're probably not on terribly solid ground.

Remember: the goal of our project is to write an original reference work.  If you're copying someone else's work, rather than going back to the original narrative, you're not really creating anything new. You're just participating in a game of Chinese whispers.

If information is discovered which includes false citations, it is subject to immediate deletion.

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. 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.

Bot enforcement
Because of the size of this wiki, global maintenance can only be done through the use of a bot. Enforcement of any of the provisions of this document are subject to automatic enforcement by bot, without prior notice. It is therefore possible that you might occasionally get it into an edit conflict with a bot. Please don't take it personally; the bot has no ability to sense you're editing an article.

It is important to note, however, that you should not rely upon the bot to clean up your mistakes. It is always better to try to do things according to the MOS. Remember two key rules:
 * Bots are stupid. They absolutely cannot predict the precise way in which you will have violated this manual of style.
 * Bots can't be everywhere at once. It might be months until the next time that the spelling bot hits the page you've just edited.  So spell things correctly now, or else your mistake might persist for an unexpectedly long time.

From time to time, a bot shall execute a script whose sole function is to clean up the code. It shall run on every page in the main namespace, as well as several other namespaces. This script will in no way change the way that a page appears. But it will perform a number of menial tasks on pages, such as:
 * the removal of extraneous spaces, per T:SPACING
 * the insertion of leading and trailing spaces in section headers, per T:HEAD
 * the placement of exactly one space following a full stop, which isn't required, but is allowed by T:SPACING
 * the placement of exactly one space between a symbol which creates a list (i.e., * and #) and the following text
 * consistent capitalisation of namespaces, such that — for instance — file: becomes File:
 * the elimination of some redundant pipe tricks — human would become simply human, for instance