Difference between revisions of "The Dreadnought Project:Editing Guide"

Revision as of 16:00, 11 January 2014

Welcome to the Editing Guide for The Dreadnought Project.

General Tips on Editing

Editors who are new at editing in WikiText should bookmark this page and refer to it when they have questions on things such as making tables.

Also, keep in mind that our own pages can be examined (by clicking "edit") and their own WikiText examined to provide quick examples. This, of course, will help keep you closer to our own customs of use, which are further detailed below.

Conventions

Article Names

Ship Articles

Individual ships are to be named where appropriate with the prefix first (e.g. H.M.S.), then the ship name, and then the year of launch in brackets.

Example: H.M.S. Dreadnought (1906)

Ship Class Articles

Ship class pages are created by ignoring the prefix (classes are not referred to as the "U.S.S. Nevada Class Battleship"), using the name of the lead ship of the class, followed by the word "Class", and then the rough type name and year of launch for the earliest vessel of the class to be launched in brackets. We use "Battleship" in lieu of "Dreadnought" and "Pre-Dreadnought", and try not to be overly precise in subtypes such as "Coastal Defence Battleship" or "Protected Cruiser".

Example: Danton Class Battleship (1909)

Classes that are denoted by a letter should have that letter in double quotes.

Example: "S" Class Destroyer (1918)

Device Names

Gun Calibres/Torpedo Diameters

Due to its compactness, the suffix -in should be used to indicate "inches" of measure. -pdr will denote "pounder".

Examples:

• 15-in gun
• 12-pdr gun

Metric measures should be abbreviated as cm or mm, without periods.

Quantities of Numerically-named Items

To foster clarity, the quantity of an item whose name starts with numbers should certainly be spelled out, and not expressed as an integer. Example: Six 4-in guns

Editors can make exceptions for numbers with long names (i.e., over twenty)

Awkward and Composite Units of Measure

Unless quoting a passage or when the unit is part of a name, the editor should spare the reader from reaching for a dictionary and calculator. If a gun is reported to weigh 4 cwt, 2 qt and 5 pounds, the weight should be recorded as "509 pounds".

Fractions

Unless a fraction is going to prove helpful in understanding something, editors are encouraged to use decimal equivalents. There may be non-technical articles where the opposite practice may prove easier to read.

Example: "4.5" rather than "4 ¹/₂"

When a fraction may be helpful, you can avail yourself of the simplified {{Frac}} template. e.g., {{Frac|3|4}} will display as "³⁄₄"

Patterns and Marks

Although it may produce some unusual examples, the diverse and generally inconsistent placement of Mark and Pattern numbers in describing hardware prompts us to the standard that these should always be used as a suffix in creating article titles.

Examples:

• Dreyer Table Mark III
• Torpedo Director Pattern 2006

Ship Names

Convention has it that ship names need to be highlighted in some way, and at The Dreadnought Project they are to be italicised. This applies to every ship name in every article. It does not however, apply to article titles.

Note that almost every ship will have an automatically-generated template to refer to it, e.g., {{UK-Lion}}

For more on this practice, see ShipLink Templates.

Class Names

Conventions regarding the style of class names is less well documented. On The Dreadnought Project the class name is to be italicised just like the ship name. "Class" ought to be capitalised at the beginning.

Example: Bellerophon Class.

Ship class pages should always have the word "Class" in them.

Article Leaders

At the start of every article, the first mention of the subject of the article should be entered in bold; for example at the top of this page Editing Guide has been so highlighted.

Ship Names

Ship names should be in bold - as well as in italics. The prefix will also be in bold. e.g., S.M.S. Bayern

Personalities

With persons who are the subject of an article (for the most part naval men), their rank and title should not be highlighted. e.g., Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe, First Earl Jellicoe

Localisation

American English is pervasive on the web, but TFS has a rich center (ooops... centre) in the ships, men and deeds of the Royal Navy, and is patterned after a storied British reference series, Jane's Fighting Ships. As such, grammar and spelling should veer toward UK English rather than American English. Some throwback words to the period might be nice, but don't overdo it.

In some sections covering foreign navies, use of foreign languages and even character-based text might seem right and natural. Such should be avoided unless the concept being discussed is truly different than something that can be described in English. Extended and repeated use of foreign language, characters outside A-Z, etc hampers authors, readers and generally harshes the buzz.

Turret Letters

Unless quoting a written document, place the letter or number of a turret in double quotes, capitalised, e.g., "A" turret

Acronyms

Acronyms should have periods within, no matter the pain caused. e.g., H.M.S., C.O.S., T.C.T., B.L..

Those sentences ending with an acronym should have a double period at the end.

The contemporary practice of ending Roman numerals, as in Mark designations, with a period can be ignored. e.g., "Torpedo Mark II" rather than "Torpedo Mark II."

Article Footer

Our convention is for every article to have the following sections at the bottom:

• See Also: a list of links to closely related articles and external webpages (particularly, Wikipedia)
• Footnotes: where your references will be listed (see #Referencing)
• Bibliography: a bullet list of valuable sources, often simply references to bibliographic templates
• a list of categories the article is a member of

Here is an example footer, as found in the article on the Dreyer Fire Control Table:

==See Also==
*[[Argo Clock]]
*[[Ford Rangekeeper]]
*[[Admiralty Fire Control Table]]

==Footnotes==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==
{{refbegin}}
*{{BibUKDreyerTableHandbook1918}}
*{{BibUKDreyersFCSystemForLocalControl1913}}
*{{BibUKDreyerTableMarkIVRoyalOak1916}}
*{{BibUKPamphletDreyerTableMarkIII*1930}}
*{{BibUKPamphletDreyerTableMarkIV*1930}}
*{{BibUKPamphletDreyerTableMarkV1930}}
*{{BibUKPamphletDreyerTurretTable1930}}
{{refend}}

[[Category:Fire Control]]
[[Category:Shipboard Equipment]]
 

Referencing

Articles on The Dreadnought Project should be well-referenced or marked clearly by the {{CN}} template to indicate that the referencing should be completed and soon. Referencing is easily accomplished.

Before using longhand "refs", check whether your source is one of the many for which we have a Citable Source Template, which greatly reduces typing. If your work is not so

Footnotes should be placed after any punctuation (full stop/period or comma for example) that follows the statement to be cited. For example:

''Iron Duke's'' pendant number from April, 1918 to the armistice was 14.{{DittColl|p. 33}}

See Also

• Category:Citable Source Templates help us cite sources breezily
• Category:ShipLink Templates help us quickly refer to any ship