Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Buffyverse task force/General

Use this page to talk about grammar, literary conventions, formatting, templates, moving, and what is and is not appropriate article content.

Capitalization conventions

I beg of project members to please follow Wikipedia's capitalization conventions in Buffyverse articles. I spent a huge amount of time fixing Buffy episode section headings a few months ago, and I just had to repeat this horrendous effort for 20+ Veronica Mars episodes just because someone made the mistake of using Angel instead of Buffy as a template. I am not sufficiently interested in Angel to go through 110 articles and fix this massive breach of style practices. I see that Rhobite and Paxomen have also mentioned this problem, but apparently to no avail. If we expect the rest of Wikipedia to take our efforts to create encyclopedia-quality articles on television shows seriously, we need to follow basic WP principles. /* end rant */ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The users User:Lil_Flip246 and Ooks (no user page) have been having edit wars on at least a handful of BVse pages with blatant disregard for, oh, everything standard in Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, they don't consider themselves associated with this project, but I left a couple of notes for them. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 11:49, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like time for the use of revert rule. Can you add the link to the capitalization rule or even move it here? Xiner 06:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! I should have included the link. I don't recall if somewhere in the megabytes of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style this is clearly stated, but section headings follow the same sentence-capitalization rule that article titles do. The latter is explicitly described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:21, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Verb tense: Literary present (PLEASE read!)

Reading over the 'verse articles, I have noticed that there is absolutely no consistency of tense. Scholarly discussion of historical events always take the past tense. On the other hand, the MLA standard for scholarly discussion of literature is the literary present. (I assume other English-speaking countries have a similar standard.) Yes, that's right, the present tense. The exception to this rule is personal history, flashbacks and whatnot which handle a time before the time actually being discussed. Three correct examples from the Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) episode are:

Spike became a regular character in the show's fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons. (Describes the real-world historical event of his appearance on the show and thus is in past tense.)
William Pratt was born in 1860 in London, England ... (Describes an event which took place prior to the events of the show and thus is in past tense.)
Spike first appears in Sunnydale in Buffy's second season in the episode School Hard ... (Describes something that happens in the course of the story and thus is in present tense.)

The Spike article is, as far as I can see, completely correct. Most of the other articles are not. I implore you as you continue to write and edit a) to follow these guidelines in any future material you write and b) when occasion arises, take some time to fix some errors that you notice. Don't go crazy and read every word of every 'verse article; just fix what you find in the course of your business. It would help enormously, as improper use of tense looks terribly unprofessional.

How to handle flashbacks: If the flashback is described in an episode article as part of the episode's summary, then it is literary present. If it is presented in a character, concept, etc. article, then it is background, and thus is past. - Che Nuevara: ^{Join the Revolution} 18:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One way to remember this is that the episode you are watching (you are watching it to confirm your data, aren't you?) is present as you watch it. The creation of the episode, however, is in the past. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:26, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One space after each period

I've noticed many articles contain two spaces after each period. I was guilty of doing that in my work until several months ago. It is not accepted on-line or off- nowadays.

Actually, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Spaces after the end of a sentence, it is accepted, given that extra inter-sentence spaces don't print. (No matter how annoying it is. ☺) I recommend we not do any editing specifically to add or remove these unnecessary spaces, and if someone does it while doing other edits, we count to ten and remember the wiki goal of cooperative editing.

On the other hand, I'd suggest we try to add a space between wiki markup elements (like "==" section markup and bulleted or numbered lists) and their adjacent text, a single blank line between section headings and paragraphs, and a single blank line between paragraphs and image markup. These extra spaces also don't affect display, but they make the resulting source text easier to edit, because they look a bit less like obfuscated C programs. Consider:

*''[[A Tale of Two Cities]]''

versus:

* ''[[A Tale of Two Cities]]''

The latter, when many elements are present, is much easier to recognize as a bulleted list than the former. Likewise, having a blank line above and below a section heading or an image tag helps it to stand out when examining a long article. These kind of minor aids help newcomers absorb wiki markup without a lot of assistance. Just my 2¢ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:42, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is. It is still the standard in most circles for hard print. In the internet, it doesn't matter either way, since HTML formats all spaces the same size, no matter how many times you hit the spacebar. - Che Nuevara: ^{Join the Revolution} 17:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do not underlink, but DON'T overdo it, either

It's great that many contributor take the time to link to other Wiki pages when they use a term, but I also see a lot of unnecessary linking. Remember that people can easily look up words in Wikipedia, Answers.com, etc. or even the dictionary! so words like "witch" or "California" can just be used as regular words. Too much linking also affects readability.

Episode titles in double quotes ("), not italics

This came up on the talk page, but I thought I'd bring it up here as well. I request project members to please put episode titles inside quotes, as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles). Italics should be reserved for TV show titles, novels, games, etc. Thanks. --SHODAN 19:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedic Style

Been reading through the episdoe guides for Buffy and the style they are written in is very informal - "Willow tells Faith that she's made her decision and that it's over now and they fight for a bit until Faith brings out her knife and the fun becomes less existent." From the Choices Episode is just one example. I'm fixing them as I find them, but this seems to be a very wide spread problem and I ust don't have the time to do them allNatashaUK 14:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]