CartoonWiki:Style manual
More actions
Six rules cover most of what this wiki needs. The rest is judgement.
1. Say what the thing is in the first sentence
Leslie Gilbert Illingworth (1902–1979) was a Welsh editorial cartoonist, best known for three decades at the Daily Mail.
Not: "Illingworth was one of the most celebrated figures in the rich history of British cartooning." A reader who does not already know who he was learns nothing from that.
2. Dates go in the infobox, not the lead
The lead may carry a life span in brackets. Everything else — born where, died where, active when — belongs in the infobox, which the skin docks in the margin rail. Prose is for what happened, not for a table written out longhand.
3. Credit every image
A figure without a credit line and a rights record is incomplete, and the skin will say so. Caption in prose, credit after it, rights record linked.
4. Prefer a short sourced article to a long unsourced one
Three paragraphs with four references is a good article. Twelve paragraphs with none is a liability. If you cannot source a claim, leave it out — or write what is known and mark the gap.
5. Use the house sections
For a cartoonist: Early life, Career, Style and method, Notable cartoons, Legacy, References. For a publication: History, Contributors, Circulation, Holdings. A reader who has read one article should be able to navigate the next one blind.
6. Categories are how this wiki is browsed
The skin builds the breadcrumb, the status chips and the browse pages from categories. An uncategorised article is invisible to everything except search. At minimum: what the subject is, where they worked, and which era.
Status categories the skin reads
| Category | What the skin shows |
|---|---|
Reviewed articles |
Green Reviewed chip |
Articles needing sources |
Ochre Needs sources chip |
Stubs |
Stub chip |
Files with no rights evidence |
Ochre provenance state on the file page |