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Style and Formatting helps The Elder Scrolls Wiki remain organized, clean, consistent, and easy to read. This article and its sub-articles contain information on proper style and Formatting at the site. For formatting of individual sections please see the links below.

The Elder Scrolls Wiki project strives to document and organize all information in and about the world of The Elder Scrolls series of video games, as effectively as possible, in the form of a wiki. Anyone is welcome to contribute! An important part of creating such an exhaustive source of information is ensuring that the content is delivered in a pleasing, uniform way. In order to achieve this, the TESWiki community has worked to produce some standards on the format of wiki articles. These standards are not set in stone, but they are considered established policy that should not be readily dismissed or ignored. Suggestions for improving the standards should be discussed on the appropriate talk page.

This document describes articles as they should be formatted in the Source Editor. Editors are free to use the default Visual Editor (VE) to get a feel for the wiki's editorial processes, but are expected to switch to Source when they feel comfortable doing so, on account of VE's numerous functional limitations and bugs.

Tone and language

Profanity

While most of The Elder Scrolls games are rated "M," article content should be suitable for all ages. Vulgar, degrading, sexual, insulting, racial, or any other type of profanity will be immediately undone and measures will be taken in order to protect our users and guests. Likewise, usernames and chat monikers must abide by this rule. Contributions outside of the mainspace (blogs, forums, chat, talk pages, etc.) may be viewed more liberally, however.

If any vandalism is spotted, please revert it immediately. If the vandalism is an entire article created dishonestly, mark it for deletion with the {{delete}} template. Images containing pornography or other questionable material should be treated in the same manner.

Those committing vandalism should be:

  1. Warned on their talk page using the {{Warning}} template. Those who violate policy unintentionally are not treated as vandals, so instead, they should be given the {{revert}} template.
  2. Vandals should be reported to the vandalism noticeboard even on their first offense. Anyone causing intentional destruction to the wiki deserves immediate banishment from the site.
  3. Alternatively, an administrator can be notified via their talk page or on Discord.

Spelling and grammar

All articles should be written in American English, exceptions being canonical material which misspells words, uses alternate dialects of the English language, or foreign languages in American English versions of the game.

Punctuation

The use of the serial comma (Oxford Comma) is preferred in lists, as is the word "they" instead of "he or she" (or similar) as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.

When quoting content in the "Contents" section of a book article, within the template {{Quote}}, a blockquote or diabox, etc., please record the literal content that appears in the game, including all errors and all punctuation. For example, The Elder Scrolls Online frequently makes use of the ellipsis character followed by a period in dialogue; on an article documenting such a quote, that should be recorded, not four periods or just three.

When quoting content in-line, periods and commas are placed inside of quotes, while colons, semicolons, question marks, and other punctuation is kept outside. For technical explanations in-line, such as those surrounding console commands, it is also best to quote content literally; ideally, they should be enclosed within <code></code> tags. For example:

  • When approached, Addvar will state, "You shouldn't leave Solitude without trying our fish. Best in Skyrim," among other phrases.
    • The original quote technically uses a period at the end of the sentence, but for fluidity with the rest of the article, this would be adapted. Note that in the "Quotes" section of Addvar's page, the quote is recorded verbatim, with a period, as it appears in-game.
  • When approached, Balgruuf the Greater will state "If it's the war you're referring to, I'm on the side of Whiterun."; this is in reference to Whiterun's neutrality in the Skyrim Civil War.
    • A semicolon is used in the broader sentence, and is therefore placed outside of the quotation marks.
  • To fix this bug, the player must use the command "setstage MQ104 160" (without quotation marks).
    • Readers will generally assume that a period is not included in a command of this nature, so the quotation marks are not strictly necessary. However, some expressions may be more ambiguous, in which cases it is recommended.

Numbers

Numeric characters below 10 should be excluded from article text in favor of the long-handed alternative. For example, "3 Daedra Hearts can be found here." should be corrected to, "Three Daedra Hearts can be found here."

You should generally write especially large numbers (a trillion or above) using scientific notation, for example 1.5×1012. "Million," "billion," etc. are acceptable as text, but "one billion, nine hundred million, four hundred and thirty-five thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two" is not.

The following uses of numbers should always use numeric digits in decimal notation:

  • Non-integers. Use decimal notation where possible. Percentages and fractions are acceptable if necessary.
  • Console Commands, such as player.additem <id> 1.
  • Item statistics, such as damage, armor rank, and value.
  • Character Level, such as "level 5"
  • When listing crafting recipes, for example:
    • 1 × Iron Ingot
    • 3 × Leather
  • Any number whose context lends itself to decimal numeric representation, such as a number whose exact length or exact value is important, even if it is especially large

Numbers quoted in dialogue or text should always be written verbatim.

Dates

In tables, dates should generally follow the ISO 8601 format and should be expressed as YYYY-MM-DD, for example "2023-05-13" instead of 05/13/2023 or 13/05/2023. If you need to specify a time, you can use the format YYYY-MM-DD:hh:mm:ss. This format allows for better sorting.

In prose, you can write out dates: "May 13, 2023." Do not include -st, -nd-, -rd, or -th suffixes after the date. If you need to write out a time, use AM and PM rather than 24-hour time.

Writing style and perspective

Articles in the mainspace should be written as if they were about historical events, real-people, or objects that existed on Earth. We do strive to offer suggestions and walkthroughs for quests and information on resolving bugs, but this process should not blatantly interfere with the historical tone of an article. The crux is to convey information without breaking the fourth wall experience.

Absolutely, under no circumstances, should an article be written in first person. Parts of some articles are written in second person, such as the walkthrough sections of quest articles, as well as certain technical subjects such as console command explanations. Content regarding personal experiences should not be listed on articles, but saved for IRC conversations, forum posts, and blogs. However, the vast majority of articles should be written in third person perspective. In these situations, always strive to use the character's name or title (e.g. the Dragonborn, Hero, Nerevarine, etc.) over "I" or "you," or by structuring your sentences in such a way that they do not rely on reference to the player to convey meaning.

Attribution

Main article: TES:Attribution

Further, do not sign edits with your name or date. Talk pages and forums require a signature and timestamp, but articles do not. The wiki software automatically records the author and date of each edit made, so there is no need for additional, in-line attribution. Most non-common sense material added to the wiki requires adequate sourcing; see the link above for more information.

Formatting

See also: Help:Editing

Emphasis

Shortcuts:
TES:CAPS
TES:EMPH
  • Bold – Bold text should only be used to emphasize the name of an article's subject, the first (and only the first time) it appears in the article. Bold text can be inserted into an article using the B in the editor toolbar, or by encapsulating a word or phrase in three apostrophes on either side of the word, such as with '''Daedra'''. This tool should not be used anywhere else.
  • Italics – Names of books (including notes and letters), video games, songs, poems, oaths, essays, and quotes should be italicized. Note that the {{Quote}} template automatically italicizes quoted information, but in regular text italics have to be done manually. In this situation, encompass the word or phrase in two apostrophes on either side. This should not be used to emphasize words in an article. For example, "Alduin is not Akatosh" is unacceptable formatting.
  • Capitalization – Unless an item, character, location etc. appears in-game in all capital letters, this type of emphasis should never be used. Article titles should match standard American English in terms of capitalization, while words appearing in the article's body should only be capitalized if they are proper nouns (this includes phrases within headers). For example, Daedric Artifact. The word "Daedric" refers to the Daedra race. Races are treated as proper nouns in the English language and thus the word will always be capitalized in sentences (note that this does not apply to creatures like wolves or bears). The word "Artifact," however, is not, and should only be capitalized if it is in the title of an article.

Special conditions

Capitalization

Skills are considered proper nouns, and thus, can be capitalized in-line, so long as the context mentions the skill itself. For example, "Swords in Skyrim utilize the One-Handed skill." employs perfect capitalization. The proceeding sentence, using the same skill-word, does not. "Amoracchius is a One-Handed sword in Oblivion." The first sentence alludes to the skill directly, whereas the second sentence uses the name of the skill, but not in the same context.

Only proper nouns and the first word of article headers should be capitalized. Ampersands and hashtags should also be excluded from headers. Bold text should not be used to emphasize headers. If a header is too small to distinguish from regular text without capitalization, this is an indication that the headers on the article in question need to be restructured.

Examples of correct usage:

==First Era==
===First Era history==
==Biography of Jarl Elisif's children==

Examples of incorrect usage:

==Love Potion #9==
==Comparisons With Other Games In The Elder Scrolls Series==
===Relationships & Family===
==='''Other items'''===
Boldfaced text

When writing an article, linking from the current article to the current article emboldens the text within the link. For example [[The Elder Scrolls Wiki:Style and Formatting]] in any other article produces a link, but in this article it will appear like this: The Elder Scrolls Wiki:Style and Formatting. This method is not preferred for highlighting an article's topic. Instead, using three apostrophes on either side of the word. For example, '''Delphine'''.

Linking

Shortcuts:
TES:OVERLINK
TES:LINK
Main article: Help:Linking

Every significant term or person referenced in an article needs to be linked to. To do this, enclose the subject in square brackets. For example, [[Alduin]] produces a link to an article about Alduin. Medium to short pages should link to important topics only once, regardless of how many times they appear, or twice if the topic appears again in an infobox or sometimes in a list. Links should not be added to bolded names or nicknames in the article's lede.

Long articles should link to a subject twice or even three times depending on length. Generally, six or more paragraphs is considered a large article. Link to the notable topic the first time it appears in the article, then again about half way down. For example, Weapons. Do not link to the page every time the word "weapons" is repeated. Also avoid making "recursive" links, or links from the current article to the current article, as in the above example.

Links to irrelevant pages should not exist. For example, in a paragraph stating, "Ulfric Stormcloak, known by some as the Bear of Markarth, is the Jarl of Windhelm and leader of the Stormcloak rebellion," the word "bear" should not be linked to the Bear (Skyrim) article; the use of "bear" here is a metaphorical descriptor and also part of a title, so a link to the article on the literal creature is unnecessary.

Additionally, links should be limited to a minimum in {{Quote}}s used to illustrate parts of an article, like those below the "Background" or "History" sections, due to them potentially placing unneeded emphasis on the words with links. If the link is needed to better understand the quote, an explanatory text containing a link next to a quote is preferred. In a situation where a link is used on a piece of text containing a metaphor, implication, allusion, etc.—and is therefore necessary to understand the quote—it may be appropriate to keep. Ask an administrator for advice if it is unclear.

Ambiguous links

Articles on broad subjects such as Dunmer or Locations are likely to be disambiguation pages or redirects. When linking one article to another, always strive to disambiguate that link, so it leads to the intended destination. For instance, Daedric armor in Skyrim requires Daedra Hearts to create. In an article about Daedric Armor in Skyrim, a link to Daedra Hearts should point to the article about those items as they appear in Skyrim, right? So, we want to format this link so it leads directly to that page; this is done through what's called a "piped link". For example, Daedra Hearts in Skyrim would be typed out like this in a Skyrim article, [[Daedra Heart (Skyrim)|Daedra Heart]]. See this article for further instruction on link fixing.

Redlinks

Shortcut:
TES:RLR

When a link is added to a word or phrase without an article, a red link or redlink displays in place of the typical blue one. Clicking a red link opens an edit window, prompting for a new article to be created. Red links are not necessarily "mistakes" or "unhelpful." In fact, seeing a red link may cause someone to desire to contribute by adding information on that page; editors and readers with more ambition than the original linker may be able to concoct a full-fledged article from that link. Adding a red link also ensures that once a page with that title is created, that it does not become an orphan, a page that no other pages link to.

Never be intimidated by red links. They are part of the ordinary process of article evolution. Most articles start as red links, advance to stubs once an editor discovers it, and eventually, they become adult articles that offer rich content for readers.

Pass them by if little can be offered at the time of their discovery, click on them to add information, or remove them if they link to unlikely topics. Unlikely topics are those which TESWiki would not find necessary to cover. A link to Artichoke could be removed, since artichokes do not make any notable appearance in an Elder Scrolls game. A link to a Ring of Fire may prove useful once enough information has been gathered on them. Images too appear in this fashion. Before clicking on one to upload it, verify that the content is free to use or qualifies as fair use before doing so.

For a complete list of current redlinks, see Special:WantedPages.

Hashtags

Do not use the # in a link unless you intend to direct to a section of that article with the title after the # as a section. When linking to articles, particular books and guides with numbers donating their order, omit the # and simply put the number. Otherwise the software will look for that number as a section title on the page.

e.g. ''[[The Real Barenziah 4]]'', not ''[[The Real Barenziah #4]]''

You can use piped links to account for this. For example, [[The Real Barenziah 4|''The Real Barenziah'' #4]].

Additionally, hastags can be used to point a link to a specific portion of an article. For example, [[Conjuration (Skyrim)#Perks]] sends a reader to the header labeled "Perks" on Conjuration (Skyrim). If you are linking to a section of an article and also need to state the name of the section in the link, you should format the pipe link like this: [[Whiterun#Appearances|Whiterun § Appearances]], which generates Whiterun § Appearances.

Lists

Adding hashtags before items in a list numbers them (ordered list). This is equivalent to the <ol></ol> tag in HTML. A sub-item can be added with an additional hashtag. For example:

  1. One
  2. Two
  3. Three
    1. Three point one

Bullets can be used for the same purpose (unordered list). This is equivalent to the <ul></ul> tag in HTML:

  • One
  • Two
  • Three
    • Three point five
      • Three point six

Most lists should use bullets, unless the order of the entries matters. If necessary, these two kinds of lists may be nested.

  1. Step one
  2. Step two (choose one)
    • This option
    • That option
  3. Step three

When recording item quantities in lists (other than crafting recipes), it is generally best to use a parenthetical note for the quantity. For example, in the locations list on the The Annotated Anuad article:

When adding additional information about an item in a list, such as its specific placement in a location, the name of the item is typically distinguished from the extra info with an en dash (–). A comma may be used instead, but the dash is generally preferred for cleanliness. The longer em dash (—) is not used in this part of a list. For example:

When listing the locations of an item, item appearances within the same location should ideally be grouped together with sub-bullets. For example, if a book appears in three different places in Windhelm, the first-level bullet should be "Windhelm," with a quantity denoted to the right of a dash. The book's appearances within the city should be listed as sub-bullets, with the specific locations (if known) recorded to the right of a dash.

  • Windhelm (x3)
    • House X – On a shelf on the first floor
    • Inn Y – Within a stack of books near the fireplace
    • Palace Z – By the window in the master bedroom

The parenthetical (x3) above may alternatively be replaced with an en dash and the quantity written out in words ("three locations").

Article layout

Shortcut:
TES:HEAD

Each article type possesses its own, unique standard for layout. Each article of that type must match as closely as possible. There may be exceptions to this, but as a general rule, all articles of a specific type should have the same format. See the links above for more specific details on layout by article type.

If an article type is not detailed by the above guides, please follow this general layout:

In-universe

All in-universe articles should be structured as follows:

  1. Infobox
  2. Lead
  3. Main article
  4. Gallery
  5. Trivia
  6. Bugs
  7. See also
  8. Appearances
  9. Sources
  10. Notes
  11. References
  12. External links
  13. Stub
  14. Category
  15. Interwiki links

Please note that not all articles use every section. Some articles follow very strict header names unique to their game or topic. For examples about what constitutes the headers in the "Main article," see the links at the very top of the page. When writing headers, capitals should only be used for the first words and for proper nouns.

OOU articles

All out-of-universe articles on games, books etc. should generally be structured as follows. This list is typically more flexible than main articles.

  1. Infobox
  2. Lead
  3. Editions
  4. Publisher's summary
  5. Plot summary
  6. Excerpts
  7. Appearances
  8. Gallery
  9. Trivia
  10. See also
  11. Cover gallery
  12. Succession box
  13. Notes
  14. References
  15. External links
  16. Stub
  17. Category
  18. Interwiki links

Infoboxes

Infoboxes are templates designed to hold basic but essential information about a topic in a tidy box at the top-right side of an article. Most articles, including virtually all in-game articles, should have an infobox of some sort. The naming scheme of these is generally "GameType," for example {{DaggerfallCharacters}}, {{SkyrimLocations}}, or {{LegendsCards}}. Each game has a unique color for its infobox, sometimes attributed to the artistic style of that game. For example, the brown color of Morrowind infoboxes is a homage to the game's murky color scheme. For relevant HTML hex codes for infoboxes, see below.

Each parameter of an infobox is placed on a new line for cleanliness, and also spread out horizontally for editor readability. The = of each line should always be one space after the longest parameter, and there should be an additional space between the = and the content of that field. The closing braces should also be placed on a new line, after the final parameter.

Example of correct usage:

{{OblivionCharacters
|image     = 
|race      = 
|gender    = 
|level     = 
|class     = 
|faction   = 
|rank      = 
|services  = 
|essential = 
|RefID     = 
|Base ID   = 
}}

Example of incorrect usage:

{{OblivionCharacters
|image=
|race = 
|gender =
|level=
|class= 
|faction=
|rank=
|services= 
|essential= 
|RefID = 
|Base ID = 
}}

Ideally, even unused/empty infobox parameters should be included. This does not affect the template output, but a readable, standardized form makes template functionality more apparent to editors and reduces the complexity of mass infobox maintenance by bots.

Trivia, notes, and external links

Shortcuts:
TES:NOTE
TES:NOTES
TES:TRIVIA

The Elder Scrolls Wiki is not a collection of external links, nor is it an indiscriminate collection of trivial factoids. Only content considered "notable" or could be widely viewed as "interesting" should be added. Anything that furthers the understanding of the topic should also be considered. However, include "trivia" with extreme caution. "Notes" should never be used for this purpose on articles, because it does not provide readers with a "meaningful" name for what the section contains. Anything could be included within a "Notes," and because of this, they would grow undesirably large. Trim them down or remove them entirely. 90% of the time, the information could be moved to the article lead or another header in the article. Acceptable trivia entries might include voice actors, misspellings in dialogue, and other real-world comparisons to in-game elements. Things like personality traits tend to end up in the "Trivia" section; consider moving them to a section just below the lead titled ==Personality==.

External links should only be relevant to the precise topic of the article. According to our media policy, video links are not permitted, due to copyright and interpersonal conflicts that have risen up around them. Links to articles at the Imperial Library or Wikipedia that cover Elder Scrolls topics may be useful. Statistic calculators, such as ones used for Alchemy, are also permitted in moderation. Usually, no more than three external links are necessary. Never assume that the external link you wish to provide is better than the three already in place. Add them with extreme caution, and remove them liberally.

Hatnotes

Shortcut:
TES:HAT

Hatnotes are templates or italicized sentences that help readers get to other relevant pages, or their intended destination, faster. All pages with a game specific parenthetical notice at the end, such as Iron Armor (Daggerfall) or Orcish Boots (Skyrim), should contain the {{For}} template and direct users to the disambiguation page where that type of item is listed for other games with parenthetical tags. Here are two examples:

{{For|this item in other games|Iron Armor}}
{{For|2=Iron Armor}}

Which renders,

For this item in other games, see Iron Armor.
For other uses, see Iron Armor.

Current hatnote templates used on the wiki are: {{For}}, {{Main}}, {{See also}}, and {{Confuse}}. The latter is used to point readers to a destination with a synonymous name as the article where they ended up. For example, Bugs is an article about unintentionally programming errors in a game's code. The word "bug" is synonymous in the English Language with "insect." A reader may have ended up on the Bugs article, looking for information on insectoid enemies, thus the {{confuse}} template aids in pushing readers to their intended destination. To use it type:

{{Confuse|Insects}}

Which renders,

Not to be confused with Insects.

This should be placed between the infobox and lead, on a new line after the end of the infobox (if there are multiple hatnotes, they should each be on their own line). On disambiguation pages, the hatnote should be placed above the {{Disambig}} template. A hatnote link is generally not necessary if the page it points to is already linked in the infobox and/or lead, such as a link to Creatures (Morrowind) on an article about a creature in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. However, every page with a suffix like (Morrowind), (Skyrim), etc. needs a hatnote pointing to the non-suffixed disambiguation page. The {{Quote}} template should always be placed a new line after the hatnote template(s).

Leads

Shortcut:
TES:LEAD

A lead is the introductory paragraph of an article. The name of the article should be emboldened within the lead. Do not use the {{PAGENAME}} magic word instead of the name written out. {{subst:PAGENAME}} can be used upon creation, but certain non-alphanumeric characters will render improperly, such as apostrophes, and must be corrected manually in the Source Editor. Leads should not exceed one or two pruned paragraphs. Take this excerpt from Azura as an example:

Azura is the Daedric Princess [1] of Dusk and Dawn, the magic between Day and Night. Her sister is Nocturnal. She is known to be one of the more merciful and benevolent Lords, though her wrath is swift and painful when it is brought about. She oversees the Daedric Realm of Moonshadow, a beautiful world of blurred colors, streaming together, cities of silver, and air like perfume.[2] The ones who visit this realm are mostly of either the Dunmer of Morrowind or the Khajiit of Elsweyr, as both revere Azura, though in different respects. Azura can be Summoned on the 21st of First Seed, or during the times of dawn or dusk at her shrine in Cyrodiil.

This "lead" contains basic, general facts about the article's subject. It helps illustrate the topic in a broad manner and serves to offer the most rudimentary, yet fundamental information about it. Each article should contain one. Refrain from inserting plot spoilers in the lead.

What types of articles should contain a lead? All of them. Since all articles contain text, even lists, a lead can be written, summarizing them. Some leads will be longer than others, some shorter.

Longer articles require longer leads to help summarize their wide scope of coverage. At least one sentence in the lead should be dedicated to each article header. Try not to give undue weight to one section of the other. For example, in an article about a Daedric Warhammer, do not write three sentences about how the armor is found, and only one for the enchantments than can be placed upon it. The only exception to this would be if the section on the armor's acquisition was significantly longer that the other sections in the article, thus requiring a larger summary.

Do not be afraid to repeat information found elsewhere in the article. That is the intention of the lead: to take all aspects of the article and combine them into one, coherent and condensed unit of writing.

In many articles, the lead (or parts of it) may incorrectly be placed under a "Description" of "Characteristics" header. This is not desirable or correct, because the lead IS the description of the article. The title "Description" or "Characteristics" is also incredibly vague and does not offer a tangible or comprehensive example of what the section contains. As with "Notes" headers, this type of header should be removed on sight.

Two examples of articles with well-written leads are Vampirism (Skyrim) and Quests (Skyrim). Be mindful that leads are one of the first items evaluated on the featured article checklist, so make sure not to skip over it. Articles missing a lead, articles with short leads, or articles that need general maintenance on their leads should have {{Lead}} added to them. For a list of articles that require lead maintenance, see here.

Categories

Shortcut:
TES:CAT

Categories help editors and readers organize and locate articles with greater ease. Categories can be added using the widget mechanism at the bottom of most pages or by adding them with wiki-markup in Visual or Source mode. Categories should be added based on the subject of the article. The most crucial categories are always added through the article's templates. For example, the basic categories for character articles are always added into the infobox, so they do not need to be added again. Further categories should be added if the character is in a guild or faction, if they are a merchant, and categories relevant for the city in which they appear. Categories should also be added for the race and gender of the individual. Never add categories such as "quests" or "weapons" just because these characters give quests or weapons. These categories are reserved for articles ABOUT weapons and quests. An example of categorization for a Dunmer woman who sells items at the Thieves Guild in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

[[Category:Skyrim: Dunmer]]
[[Category:Skyrim: Females]]
[[Category:Skyrim: Thieves Guild Members]]
[[Category:Skyrim: Merchants]]
[[Category:Skyrim: Riften Characters]]

The general, overarching categories should not be added. These include the categories Category:Characters, Category:Locations, and Category:Bosmer. These should be removed from articles when noticed. Conversely, it is important to stick to the game-specific ones instead, such as Category:Skyrim: Characters, Category:Oblivion: Locations, or Category:Shivering Isles: Bosmer. Sometimes, no game-specific categories exist, such as Category:Royalty. This is fine. Simply add the general category.

There are instances in which separate, but similarly named categories must be used. For instance, Moonshadow is a plane of Oblivion. There is a category called Category:Oblivion: Locations, which seems appropriate. It is not. Category:Oblivion: Locations exists for locations present in the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, whereas the article Moonshadow refers to the Daedric realm. The category Category:Planes of Oblivion should be used instead.

Interwiki links

There are translations of this wiki in several languages. These can be found at the bottom of the main page or on the List of The Elder Scrolls Wikis in other languages. Many articles include links to their page in other languages at the very bottom of the article, called interwiki or interlanguage links. These links should be ordered the way they are on the main page (alphabetically), and there should be an invisible comment just above them to indicate to editors what they are. For example:

<!--Interwiki links-->
[[de:Galmar Stein-Faust]]
[[es:Galmar Puño de Piedra]]
[[fr:Galmar Rudepoing]]
[[ru:Галмар Каменный Кулак]]

Naming and focus

Focus

Always maintain focus when writing an article. If the article is about Humans, proceed to write about their genetic uniqueness, their culture, their history, and provide links and short descriptions to races of the human species. Furthermore, an article on Humans should not list every humanoid character in a game. Instead, it should link to races, which may link to a list of people with that race or a list of that race's most prominent historical figures.

If an article is about a location, for example, give a brief description of what occurs there, not a walkthrough of the entire quest. A link to a quest that appears in that location is more appropriate. Ask yourself whether the information you are adding is relevant to the topic of the article. If not, a link to the topic you want to add might be more appropriate. We want to maximize a reader's chances of finding the information they're looking for, on their first search attempt, without being redundant.

Article names

Shortcut:
TES:COMMON

Pages are titled the way formal publications are titled, with all non-prepositions capitalized. This style preference is second only to what appears in game. For example, if a book with the title I am an example book uses sentence-style casing instead of title-style casing, we prefer the in-game style over what is grammatically correct.

TESWiki uses a parenthesized (bracketed) suffix system. Any pages that need suffixes (such as pages relating to disambigs), should always use capitals. (e.g. Speechcraft (Oblivion) rather than Speechcraft (oblivion). This also applies to non-proper nouns, of course excluding prepositions. Suffixes should usually be the game or DLC that the subject appears in, although particularly minor DLCs may be excluded from this (ask an admin). If two articles of the same name are also in the same game, go down one level of commonality; e.g. if there were a character and a creature named "Hobbes" in Skyrim, the articles would be named [[Hobbes (Character)]] and [[Hobbes (Creature)]]. The suffix should be as broad as possible while still making sense.

Following Wikipedia's policy on article titles, all articles on the Elder Scrolls Wiki should be named as they appear in game. In cases of objects, persons, terms, or places, the most common name should be selected. For example, Ebony Mail is a Daedric Artifact that appears in almost every title in the main series. Formally, the object is known as "Ebony Mail of Boethiah," suffixed by the name of Lord who fastened it. Because the piece of armor is displayed in the item menus as "Ebony Mail" most often and is referred to by in-game persons as "Ebony Mail" minus the suffix. The title "Ebony Mail" is the most appropriate as it is the most common and recognizable. Likewise, articles named after persons should omit aristocratic titles or monikers unless most commonly appearing that way within the game. For example, Millona Umbranox is the Countess of Anvil. Although formally titled "Countess Millona Umbranox of Anvil," she is most commonly referred to simply as "Millona Umbranox" with her in-game dialogue options omitting the title and most in-game persons referring to her simply by her. Thus, an article on the wiki about her must be titled without her county included.

Articles describing collections of objects or entities (n > 1) should be given a plural name, e.g. Dragons (Skyrim) or Books (Skyrim). This includes list articles and pages similar in scope. Otherwise, in situations where an article describes a specific instance of an object or entity, the page should be given a singular name, e.g. Dragon (Skyrim) or Iron Sword (Skyrim). If a correctly named singular article title needs to be referred to in the plural in another context, an "s" can be appended to the end of the link, outside the square brackets. Redirects based on pluralization should be created where necessary, but only in situations where the aforementioned technique is ineffective.

Creating an article

Articles can generally describe:

  • An object, such as an item or weapon
  • A character, either friendly or hostile
  • A location
  • A guide on how to do something, such as a quest or mission
  • A in-game mechanic, such as Character Level or Health.
  • A well-established concept in the lore

Anyone is welcome to update the wiki, but before creating a new article, double-check to ensure the article does not already exist. Use the search bar in the upper left-hand corner of the screen to search for the specific title of the desired article. Also check that the article may not exist under a similar topic. For example, an editor may desire to write an article on Character Level; an article called Leveling up already exists, covering the same content. Instead of creating a new article at Character Level, the appropriate step would be to either rename the existing article to the new title or create a redirect from the new name to the pre-existing page.

New articles can be started by clicking on redlinks. Before doing so, ensure that an article under a similar name or spelling does not already exist. If not, create the page. If it does, consider mending the links so that it points to the correct page, or create a new redirect page.

For more advice on article creation, read this article on Wikipedia!

Unknown information

In some cases you won't have all the information at hand. If this is the case, please do not fill in information with guesses or approximations. Nothing is worse than inaccurate information! This is especially true of numerical details, such as damage ranges, but might not always apply to descriptions. If you can only remember an approximate description then in most cases this could suffice, but please use your discretion, and mark the article as requiring an additional set of eyes with the templates {{Attention}} or {{conf}}.

Please omit sections if they are contentious, unsourced, and likely to remain unsourced. If contestable information might have a source out there, flag that sentence with {{fact}}, so readers and editors alike know not to take the claim at face value.

Most ingredients and plants should have a "Locations" section. If you don't know where to find them, please add the template {{Missing}} to that section to denote that the content must still be added. If such a template were to be omitted, readers may not necessarily realize that this information is unknown, instead assuming that an ingredient simply has no in-game locations at all.

Boxes

Many articles that discuss an object or character in the game make use of boxes, which are standardized methods of presenting similar information on related objects. Each article type, for instance, Character articles use the same or similar formatting across all games. The main difference is the coloring of these boxes. See the table below for information on how the color coding works. Any boxes relating to a specific game need to be that color, with very few exceptions being quest navigation templates such as {{OblivionMagesGuildQuests}} and {{SkyrimCollegeOfWinterholdQuests}}.

Game Color
Arena #841B17 – Link Test
Daggerfall #004200 – Link Test
Morrowind #271F07 – Link Test
Bloodmoon #705423 – Link Test
Tribunal #3C271F – Link Test
Oblivion #2F4F4F – Link Test
Shivering Isles #615868 – Link Test
Knights of the Nine #204F71 – Link Test
Skyrim #0B2763 – Link Test
Dawnguard #0C0D3F – Link Test
Dragonborn #1D2438 – Link Test
Online #111111 – Link Test
Game Color
Redguard #5B3A23 – Link Test
Travels #182E24 – Link Test
Battlespire #154245 – Link Test
Oblivion Mobile #3E6B4F – Link Test
Legends #9A862B – Link Test
Blades #D99058 – Link Test
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