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All The Tropes:Style Guide: Difference between revisions
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{{cleanup|This document provides inconsistent formatting advice, with some examples assuming the now-deactivated visual
{{shortcut|ATT:STYLE}}This page documents the house style for [[All The Tropes:About|All The Tropes]]. If you have a question about how to write and present information, you should find answers here.<ref>If you don't find a relevant answer here, please ask [[User:Robkelk]], who is by default in charge of All The Tropes's documentation.</ref>
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Please also use italics, not all-caps, for emphasis. Since the days of [[UseNet]], all-caps has meant "shouting" on the 'net, and most people avoid shouting in casual conversation.
Also, be aware that we have a number of templates used to insert standard markup into trope pages, like the examples and tropelist banners and the top-of-page elements specific to the various page types. Many of these will be automatically inserted into pages created in the Trope Workshop or with the ATT Page creator, but there are others which you can use to add features to your pages which will automatically conform to this guide. If you want to find out more about these, and learn what other templates might be available to you, see our page [[All The Tropes:Our Custom Templates]].
=== Adding Examples to Tropes ===
When you add an example to a trope page, take care to put it in the proper section. Don't, for example, add an item for a film to an example for the book that inspired it just because they are related works. Put the new example under "Film" (and make sure it links to the page for that film, and not the book or a disambiguation page).
If there isn't a section for the particular kind of media your example comes from, feel free to add it! (We have a [[Template:Media Headers|standard list of media types]] we're trying to make sure is used everywhere, consult it if you need help.) Oh, and if you do add a new section, do make sure it's in proper alphabetical order ''vis-à-vis'' the other sections on the page. ("Other Media" and "Real Life" go at the end of the list, however, out of alphabetical order. Some tropes may have a "General" or "Meta" section; this will go at the top ''before'' the other sections. Occasionally a [[Trope Namer]] or [[Trope Codifier]] will be so substantial and/or influential that it, too, will get its own section at the top.)
If your example is an elaboration or another instance of the trope in a work that already has an entry in an existing section, that's something that sometimes gets called a "subexample" around here. Feel free to add it as a secondary bullet point under the "main" example.
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First, there's an asterisk. This creates the bullet point that sets the new trope off from its neighbors. It's followed by a space to improve the readability of the page source.
Second, the trope name, surrounded by double square brackets. The brackets turn the name into a link as noted elsewhere. If when you save the page this is a [[Red Link]], you've done something wrong -- either you've used a trope that doesn't exist on this site<ref>Not uncommon when the editor is a recent refugee from [[TV Tropes]]</ref>, you misspelled something, or you got the capitalization wrong. We have a hints system that pops up a progressive list of possible links for you in the upper right corner of the edit window; make use of that to avoid problems. It's also a good idea to make sure the link you're using is the actual name of the trope you want,<ref>Which is another thing that sometimes trips up recent refugees from TV Tropes. For example, our page about [[sobriquet]]s is called "Sobriquet", not "Red Baron". Our page Red Baron is about the [[Red Baron]]. Similarly, our page [[Mata Hari]] is about the woman who used that name, while the character type can be found under [[Seductive Spy]].</ref> and not a redirect, a disambiguation page, or a work. (We have more than a few works whose titles ''sound'' like trope names; every once in a while a mod has to remove a trope entry that points to one of them.)
Immediately after the trope link is a colon (":"). Don't forget it, or you may get a little note from a mod or another user who's had to go in and add them to your work. Don't use dashes or long dashes or anything else here. And it, too, gets followed by a space -- that's a general punctuation rule, not just for readability here.
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Potholing ''part'' of a word is an accessibility sin, especially if different parts of the same word are potholed to different links. Not only is it difficult for somebody with less-than-perfect motor control to select a small target link in the middle of other links, it looks bad in the default wiki interface because the wiki flags external links. Multiple external links in a single word can make the word [https://www.example.com un][https://www.example.org read][https://www.example.net a][https://www.example.com ble], so don't do it.
Finally, '''don't link to TV Tropes for ''any'' reason'''. Some of the staff there still go into frothing apoplexy at the very thought of All The Tropes' mere existence, and we don't want to stress the poor dears any more than they already are. If we absolutely need to link to TV Tropes (such as on the work page for that site), a mod has already done so. If you want to list a trope they have and we don't, which you think is absolutely indispensable, create your own version of it in the [[:Category:Trope Workshop|Trope Workshop]] and link to ''that'' when it passes muster. And ''don't'' link to a TV Tropes page because you can't be bothered to find the page here because it's been renamed or we've capitalized or punctuated it differently.<ref>Don't laugh. This has happened.</ref>
== Internal Links (Wicks) ==
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That said, when it comes to links to other pages on the wiki, the guidelines are a little different -- and for the most part, looser, mainly because you can't make an internal link quite as confusing or unintelligible as an external link can be without really ''working'' at it.<ref>No, that is not a challenge.</ref>
The only real style requirements exist for work names. Wherever possible, the first occurrence of a work name in an example or a description should also be a link. This requires that you use the name of a work as it appears on the work page, matching punctuation and capitalization exactly. That's usually not to hard to determine -- if you don't already know it off the top of your head, you can use the wiki's search function to find it. (However, always click through a search result. You may have found a disambiguation or franchise page or a redirect and not the actual work page; clicking through will make sure you get to the right name, eventually.)
Once you have the right name, insert it into your edit with the appropriate markup. Right off the bat, of course, it should be in link markup, as described above. Of course, we don't have a page for every existing work on the wiki. But even if there isn't a page for it here, we still want the work name to be a link -- it might inspire another troper to write that page. So even if you can't find a page, mark up the work name as a link anyway.
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Most work names should then be put italics markup (two single quotes/apostrophes before and after the link markup). There are exceptions to this -- short stories, individual songs, and other short-format works get double quotes instead of italics -- but in general italics are a safe choice.
Sometimes you might think it's necessary (or more attractive) to use a pothole with a work name. For instance, the ''[[
Again, [[Pothole]]s are good, while [[sinkhole]]s are bad. Potholes and Sinkholes where different parts of ''the same word'' link to different pages are horrid - there's no way for a casual reader to know (or even suspect) that there's more than one link in the word. Unless you happen to take advantage of the wiki's color-coded internal links, but then it looks [[It Gets Worse|rid]][[From Bad to Worse|icul]][[It Got Worse|ous.]] It's also an [http://blogaccessibility.com/sin-2-of-inaccessible-blogs-using-consecutive-one-worded-links/ accessibility sin].
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** Punctuation and other symbols (#, @, etc.) that appear after the first character come after the space but before numerals.
* Numerals (0-9) come after symbols and before letters.
* It should go without saying, but the order is ''not'' case-sensitive. "AA" comes before "ab"; "aa" comes before "AB".<ref>The Windows application "Notepad++"
* Finally, ignore leading articles ("a", "an" and "the"). This means [[The Cape (trope)]] will sort between [[Can't Argue with Elves]] and [[Car Bomb]].
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