Camp Lakebottom Wiki:Manual of Style

This page will give an idea of how to write articles so they are consistent with this wiki's practices.

For rules on what kind of articles are allowed, please see Camp Lakebottom Wiki:Rules.

Article titles
The article title must be the subject's official name, e.g. "McGee" instead of "Main Character." The article title should be official but also concise. For example, even though "Jordan Buttsquat" is the character's full name, his article should be titled "Buttsquat" because it is the most commonly-used, accurate version of his name. When an official name is not available, one that fits the subject's description should be used, e.g. "." Though if the character is given both a name on the show and one in a model sheet, their model sheet name will be used, e.g. "Papa Gnome" instead of "Grand Master of the Gnomes." Though if a member of the staff makes a comment on how wrong a model sheet names a character, what the staff calls them will be used, e.g. "" instead of "."

Article titles must also be written in singular instead of plural, e.g. "Book" instead of "Books" - exceptions are only when the article is about a species or a list, e.g. "List of books".

General article guide

 * Always include at least a sentence about the subject when starting an article.
 * The first sentence should give a brief definition of the article's subject, and the subject has to be written in bold.
 * When writing the article content, episode titles should be written in quotation marks, e.g. "Arachnattack". Song titles should also be enclosed in quotation marks, e.g. "Camp Lakebottom Theme Song".
 * The definite article (the) and indefinite articles (a/an) should be avoided in article titles except when they are part of an official title.
 * Please write in third person: use "the viewer" instead of "you".
 * Linking is usually limited to the first occurrence of the word or phrase in each article, not counting links inside infoboxes. This is because spamming too many wiki links makes articles difficult to read. Adding multiple links for the same term might be acceptable in very long articles, where linked instances of the term are very far apart.

What should an article have?
This depends on the page. Some things are meant for some pages.

For characters
Each character gets an article, as long as they are important enough. What defines important enough are shown in the three standards below.
 * Every character that visually appears on the show is allowed to have a page, except for characters that only appear in a group and don't perform any unique individual actions.
 * For the above group characters, a character page about the group should be created instead.
 * Unseen characters should only have their own page if they are specifically named or play a role in an episode's plot
 * Characters with very minimal information can be grouped by their species and listed on a species page with all the other similar characters of that species.

Each page of a character should have the following sections: At the bottom of the page, place the navigation template related to the character (in most cases this will be Template:MinorCharacterNav). Also categorize the article accordingly. If the character has not yet appeared in an aired episode, use the unreleased template.
 * the Infobox with relevant information about the character (see Template:Infobox character for instructions)
 * Optionally, Appearance and Personality sections to further describe their characteristics,
 * Optionally, a Trivia section, describing any popular culture references or other trivia worth noting,
 * Optionally, an External links section relevant to the character including links to official pages, informative resources, shrines, etc.

For locations
Each major location gets an article. Depending on the information, sublocations may be given their own page or assimilated onto the main location page. Examples of the latter include the camp of Sunny Smiles.

Locations are usually given the fullest title used in the show. For example, the "" is usually referred to as such, and not as an individual city. Thus, the location page is titled "". A location article should include: Place the navigation template related to the location, and don't forget to categorize them according to the relevant categories. If the location is in an episode that is currently unaired, use the unreleased template.
 * The Appearance section, detailing what the place is like or what is found there,
 * The Story section, detailing where the location was featured and what effect it had on the plot,
 * You may want to put in behind the scenes Trivia as well, if possible.
 * If there are any, one is to put pictures of said place in the Gallery section.

For location parent
Parent pages, such as "", can be used to house (or parent, hence the name) other, smaller pages. When editing these, please include an ==Areas== section for all smaller parts of the location.

Stubs
Do not add Category:Article stubs directly to an article. Instead use the Stub template by adding to the top of the article, after any infobox template. Articles should only be marked as a stub if the article is incomplete and is missing some basic information. For example, even though the article about the "" does not have many sections, it should not be marked a stub because there is nothing else worthwhile to say about it.

When adding a quotation
It's encouraged to have at least a quote in every article. Use the Template:Quote for one-liners. It's best to write the quotations in a "Quote" section, and if there are more than five quotes available, one is to make a subpage containing quotes. An example is the Quotes of McGee page.

Capital letters
Capitalization of article titles and section headers should include the first letter of the first word being a capital letter, but it should otherwise follow the normal English rules of capitalization. For example, a section title should be "External links" instead of "External Links."

An exception is the capitalization of article titles for characters. Because official Camp Lakebottom documents generally capitalize all words (except for conjunctions, prepositions, and articles) in character names, we follow the same convention.

Spelling
There have in the past been edit wars over the territorial spelling of a word (i.e. words spelled differently in between Europe and the United States). For the purpose of maintaining consistency, and because the subject of this wiki originates from the United States, words on this wiki should conform to the spelling used in U.S. English. This applies only to main namespace pages, not talk or user pages. Although no user should be harassed or punished for using other regional spellings of words, editors are encouraged to conform text in articles to U.S. spelling. If you come across a word spelled the way it is in another country (for example if you see "color" spelled as "colour"), just change it to the U.S. English spelling and be done with it.

Point of view
On most Wikis, there is a policy to give a "Neutral Point of View" (NPOV). More on this can be found on the Neutral Point of View page.