Wikipedia:Manual of Style

Article titles

A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic, balancing the criteria of being natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles.

For formatting guidance see the Wikipedia:Article titles § Article title format section, noting the following:

• Capitalize the initial letter (except in rare cases, such as eBay), but otherwise follow sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects), except where title case would be used in ordinary prose. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization).
• To italicize, add {{italic title}} near the top of the article. To italicize only part of the title, include the |string= parameter with the specific text to be italicized. Use of italics should conform to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Italic type.
• Do not use articles (a, an, or the) as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless it is an inseparable part of a name (The Hague) or of the title of a work (A Clockwork Orange, The Simpsons).
• Normally use nouns or noun phrases: Early life, not In early life.
• The final character should not be punctuation unless it is an inseparable part of a name (Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) or an abbreviation (Inverness City F.C.), or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (John Palmer (1814 schooner)).
• Whenever quotation marks or apostrophe-like variants appear (Geʽez), add a redirect for the same title using apostrophes (Ge'ez).

Subject both to the above and to Wikipedia:Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly § Punctuation, applies also to the title.

Section organization

An article's content should begin with an introductory lead section – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section). The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections.

Infoboxes, images, and other related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.

Certain standardized templates and wikitext that are not sections go at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, and in the following order:

• A short description, with the {{Short description}} template
• A disambiguation hatnote, most of the time with the {{Hatnote}} template (see also Wikipedia:Hatnote § Hatnote templates)
• No-output templates that indicate the article's established date format and English-language variety, if any (e.g., {{Use dmy dates}}, {{Use Canadian English}})
• Banner-type maintenance templates, Dispute and Cleanup templates for article-wide issues that have been flagged (otherwise used at the top of a specific section, after any sectional hatnote such as {{main}})
• An infobox, which is optional (except in special cases like {{Taxobox}} and {{Chembox}}, or a variant thereof, at applicable articles); usually also includes the first image
• An introductory image, when an infobox is not used, or an additional image is desired for the lead section (for unusually long leads, a second image can be placed midway through the lead text)

In the Vector 2022 skin, the table of contents is separate from the article content. In some older skins, a navigable table of contents appears automatically just after the lead if an article has at least four section headings.

If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article (see Wikipedia:Summary style), insert {{main|Article name}} or {{further|Article name}} immediately under the section heading.

As explained in detail in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers, several kinds of material (mostly optional) may appear after the main body of the article, in the following order:

• Books or other works created by the subject of the article, under a section heading "Works", "Publications", "Discography", "Filmography", etc. as appropriate (avoid "Bibliography", confusable with reference citations)
• Internal links to related English Wikipedia articles, with section heading "See also"
• Notes and references, with a section heading "Notes" or "References" (usually the latter), or a separate section for each in this order (see Wikipedia:Citing sources); avoid "Bibliography", confusable with the subject's works
• Relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources; use the section heading "Further reading"; be highly selective, as Wikipedia is not a bibliographic directory
• Relevant and appropriate websites that have not been used as sources and do not appear in the earlier appendices, using the heading "External links", which may be made a subsection of "Further reading" (or such links can be integrated directly into the "Further reading" list instead); link templates for sister-project content also usually go at the top of this section when it is present (otherwise in the last section on the page)
• The following final items never take section headings:
  • Internal links organized into navigational boxes
  • Authority control metadata, if needed, using {{Authority control}} (distinguishes uses of the same name for two subjects, or multiple names for one subject)
  • Categories, which should be the very last material in the article's source code if there are no stub templates
  • Stub templates, if needed, which should follow the categories

Stand-alone list articles have some additional layout considerations.

Section headings

Section headings should generally follow the guidance for article titles above and be presented in sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects in developing countries), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects in Developing Countries).

All headings must be on their own line, preceded by exactly one blank line, and followed by either one or no blank lines. Do not misuse description list markup (";") to create pseudo-headings.

As a matter of consistent style, section headings should not:

• redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g., Early life, not Smith's early life or His early life
• refer to a higher-level heading, unless doing so is shorter or clearer
• be numbered or lettered as an outline
• be phrased as a question, e.g., Languages, not What languages are spoken?
• use color or unusual fonts that may cause accessibility problems
• be wrapped in markup, such as bold and italics, which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues

== {{subst:Anchor|Consequences}} Implications ==
<!-- "Richard Dawkins" and "Daniel Dennett" link here. -->

== <span class="anchor" id="Consequences"></span> Implications ==
<!-- "Richard Dawkins" and "Daniel Dennett" link here. -->

Consistency within articles

The conventions of a particular variety of Standard English should be followed consistently within a given article. Exceptions include:

• Quotations and titles of works (such as books, films, and music) should be given as they appear in sources. However, there are certain situations where this principle is not followed in order to maintain a level of typographic conformity across the encyclopedia. See § Typographic conformity.
• Proper names use the subject's own spelling, e.g., joint project of the United States Department of Defense and the Australian Defence Force; International Labour Organization.
• For articles about chemistry-related topics, the international standard spellings aluminium, sulfur, caesium (and derivative terms) should be used regardless of the variety of English otherwise employed in the article. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry) § Element names.

Opportunities for commonality

For an international encyclopedia, using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable.

• Use universally accepted terms rather than those less widely distributed, especially in titles. For example, glasses is preferred to the national varieties spectacles (British English) and eyeglasses (American English); ten million is preferable to one crore (Indian English).
• If a variant spelling appears in a title, make a redirect page to accommodate the others, as with artefact and artifact, so that all variants can be used in searches and linking.
• Terms that differ between varieties of English, or that have divergent meanings, may be glossed to prevent confusion, for example, the trunk (American English) or boot (British English) of a car ....
• Use a commonly understood word or phrase in preference to one that has a different meaning because of national differences (rather than alternate, use alternative or alternating, as appropriate), except in technical contexts where such substitution would be inappropriate (alternate leaves; alternate law).
• When more than one variant spelling exists within a national standard variety of English, the most commonly used current variant (across all varieties of Standard English) should usually be preferred, except where the less common spelling has a specific usage in a specialized context, e.g., connexion in Methodist connexionalism.

For assistance with specific terms, see Comparison of American and British English § Vocabulary, and American and British English spelling differences; most dictionaries also indicate regional terms.

Strong national ties to a topic

An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the standard (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation. For example:

For topics with strong ties to the Commonwealth of Nations, or multiple Commonwealth countries or other former British territories, use British spelling.

Retaining the existing variety

When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. Only very exceptionally (such as when a topic has strong national ties, or the change reduces ambiguity) is there a valid reason for changing from one acceptable option to another. When no English variety has been established and discussion does not resolve the issue, use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety. An exception to this is do not change the variety of English within a quotation.

The established variety in a given article is documented by placing the appropriate Use X English template on the article page. The appropriate variety of English template can also be placed on its talk page.

An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. {{subst:uw-engvar}} may be placed on an editor's talk page to explain this.

Capitalization of The

Generally, do not capitalize the word the in mid-sentence: throughout the United Kingdom, not throughout The United Kingdom. Conventional exceptions include certain proper names (he visited The Hague) and most titles of creative works (Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings – but be aware that the might not be part of the title itself, e.g., Homer composed the Odyssey).

There are special considerations for band names, institution names, nicknames, titles of works, and trademarks.

Titles of works

The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (as detailed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Composition titles). The first and last words in an English-language title are always capitalized.

• Correct: An Eye for an Eye
• Correct: Worth the Fighting For

Capitalization in non-English language titles varies, even over time within the same language; generally, retain the style of the original for modern works, and follow the usage in current English-language reliable sources for historical works. When written in the Latin alphabet, many of these items should also be in italics, or enclosed in quotation marks.

• Correct: Les Liaisons dangereuses
• Correct: "Hymnus an den heiligen Geist"

Titles of people

• In generic use, use lower case for words such as president, king, and emperor (De Gaulle was a French president; Louis XVI was a French king; Three prime ministers attended the conference).
• Directly before the person's name, such words begin with a capital letter (President Obama, not president Obama). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper names (David Cameron was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Hirohito was Emperor of Japan; Louis XVI was King of France). Royal styles take capitals (Her Majesty; His Highness); exceptions may apply for particular offices.

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines

• Religions, sects, and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally, "the" is not capitalized before such names (the Unitarians, not The Unitarians).
• Religious texts are capitalized, but often not italicized (the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, the Talmud, the Granth Sahib, the Bible). Do not capitalize "the" when using it in this way. Some derived adjectives are capitalized by convention, and some are not (biblical, but Quranic); if unsure, check a dictionary.
• Honorifics for deities, including proper names and titles, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit, the Horned One, Bhagavan). Do not capitalize "the" in such cases or when referring to major religious figures or characters from mythology (the Prophet, the Messiah, the Virgin). Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized (many gods; the god Woden; saints and prophets).
• Pronouns for figures of veneration or worship are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures (God and his will).
• Broad categories of mythical or legendary beings start with lower-case letters (elf, fairy, nymph, unicorn, angel), although in works of fantasy, such as the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and some video games, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings form a culture or race in a fictional universe. Capitalize the names or titles of individual creatures (the Minotaur, Pegasus) and of groups whose name and membership are fixed (the Magi, or the Three Wise Men, the Furies). Generalized references are not capitalized (these priests; several wise men; cherub-like).
• Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood and the Exodus; but annual flooding and an exodus of refugees).
• Philosophies, theories, movements, and doctrines use lower case unless the name derives from a proper name (capitalism versus Marxism) or has become a proper name (republican, a system of political thought; Republican, a political party). Use lower case for doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as opposed to specific events), even if they are capitalized by some religious adherents (virgin birth, original sin, transubstantiation).
• Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized in the context of philosophical doctrine (Truth, the Good); used more broadly, they are in lower case (Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice). Use capitals for personifications represented in art (the guidebook mentioned statues of Justice and Liberty).
• Eponyms are capitalized (Edwardian, De Morgan's laws, Alice in Wonderland syndrome, plaster of Paris, Platonic idealism, Draconian constitution of Athens), except in idiomatic uses disconnected from the original context and usually lower-cased in sources (a platonic relationship; complained of draconian workplace policies). An entire phrase in which an eponym is an adjective is not capitalized except when the phrase is itself a proper name (e.g., the title of a published work: The China Syndrome).

Calendar items

• Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter (June, Monday; the Fourth of July refers only to the US Independence Day – otherwise July 4 or 4 July).
• Seasons are in lower case (her last summer; the winter solstice; spring fever), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events (Old Man Winter; competed on the Spring Circuit).

Animals, plants, and other organisms

When using taxonomic ("scientific") names, capitalize and italicize the genus: Berberis, Erithacus. (Supergenus and subgenus, when applicable, are treated the same way.) Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: Berberis darwinii, Erithacus rubecula superbus, Acacia coriacea subsp. sericophylla; no exception is made for proper names forming part of scientific names. Higher taxa (order, family, etc.) are capitalized in Latin (Carnivora, Felidae) but not in their English equivalents (carnivorans, felids); they are not italicized in either form, except for viruses, where all names accepted by the ICTV are italicized (Retroviridae).

Cultivar and cultivar group names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized (including the word Group in the name); cultivar names appear within single quotes (Malus domestica 'Red Delicious'), while cultivar groups do not (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group).

English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case in article prose (plains zebra, mountain maple, and southwestern red-tailed hawk) and in sentence case at the start of sentences and in other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized. They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: Przewalski's horse, California condor, and fair-maid-of-France. This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: bird of prey, oak, great apes, Bryde's whales, livestock guardian dog, poodle, Van cat, wolfdog. When the common name coincides with a scientific taxon, do not capitalize or italicize, except where addressing the organism taxonomically: A lynx is any of the four medium-sized wild cat species within the genus Lynx. Non-English vernacular names, when relevant to include, are handled like any other non-English terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it. Non-English names that have become English-assimilated are treated as English (ayahuasca, okapi).

Standardized breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards. Examples: German Shepherd, Russian White goat, Berlin Short-faced Tumbler. As with plant cultivars, this applies whether or not the included noun is a proper name, in contrast to how vernacular names of species are written. However, unlike cultivars, breeds are never put in single quotation marks, and their names are never part of a scientific name. A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standards (rare cases include Norwegian Forest Cat and American Quarter Horse).

Create redirects from alternative capitalization and spelling forms of article titles, and from alternative names, e.g., Adélie Penguin, Adelie penguin, Adelie Penguin and Pygoscelis adeliae should all redirect to Adélie penguin.

Celestial bodies

The words sun, earth, moon, and solar system do not take capitals in general use (The sun was over the mountain top; The tribal people thought of the whole earth as their home). They are capitalized when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ('Unconquered Sun') was the Roman sun god) or when used as the name of a specific body in a scientific or astronomical context (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).

Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names, and therefore capitalized (The planet Mars is in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux). The first letter of every word in such a name is capitalized (Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri; Milky Way, not Milky way). Words such as comet and galaxy should be capitalized when they form part of a proper name, but not when they are used as a generic term (Halley's Comet is the most famous of the comets; the Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy).

Compass points

Do not capitalize directions such as north or their related forms (We took the northern road) except when they are parts of proper names (Great North Road, Great Western Drive, South Pole).

Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status, including informal conventional names (Southern California; the Western Desert), and derived terms for people (e.g., a Southerner as someone from the Southern United States). Do not capitalize descriptive names for regions that have not attained the status of proper names, such as southern Poland.

Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated, depending on the variety of English adopted in the article. Southeast Asia and northwest are more common in American English; but South-East Asia and north-west in British English. In cases such as north–south dialogue and east–west orientation, use an en dash; see § Other uses for en dashes.

Proper names versus generic terms

Capitalize names of particular institutions (the founding of the University of Delhi; the history of Stanford University) but not generic words for institutions (the high school is near the university). Do not capitalize the at the start of an institution's name, regardless of the institution's preferred style. There are rare exceptions, when a leading The is represented by a T in the organization's acronym: The International Cat Association (TICA).

Treat political or geographic units similarly: The city has a population of 55,000; The two towns merged to become the City of Smithville. Do not mimic the style of local newspapers which refer to their municipality as the City or The City, except for the City of London in some circumstances.

This guidance extends to the output of institutions, companies, and other organizations. For example, the full name of legislation like Online Safety Act 2023 would be capitalized, but subsequent references to the act would not.

Write first occurrences in full

When an abbreviation will be used in an article, introduce it using the full expression, and the abbreviation in parentheses:

Do not use capitals in the full version merely because capitals are used in the abbreviation: an early Local Area Network (LAN).

Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as PhD, DNA, or USSR) need not be expanded even on first use.

Plural forms

Pluralize acronyms by adding -s or -es: Three CD-ROMs and two BIOSes were released. Do not use a greengrocer's apostrophe to form plurals: Three CD-ROM's and two BIOS's were released.

Punctuation and spacing

An abbreviation may or may not be terminated with a full point (also called a period or full stop). A consistent style should be maintained within an article. North American usage is typically to end all abbreviations with a period (Dr. Smith of 42 Drummond St.) but in common British and Australian usage, no period is used if the abbreviation (contraction) ends in the last letter of the unabbreviated form (Dr Smith of 42 Drummond St) unless confusion could result. This is also common practice in scientific writing. Regardless of punctuation, words that are abbreviated to more than one letter are spaced (op. cit. not op.cit. or opcit). There are some exceptions: PhD (see above) for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". In most situations, Wikipedia uses no such punctuation inside acronyms and initialisms: GDP, not G.D.P.

US and U.S.

US is a commonly used abbreviation for United States, although U.S. – with periods and without a space – is common in North American publications, including in news journalism. Some American style guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style (since 2010), have deprecated U.S. and recommend US.

For commonality reasons, use US by default when abbreviating, but retain U.S. in American or Canadian English articles in which it is already established, unless there is a good reason to change it. Because use of periods for abbreviations and acronyms should be consistent within any given article, always use US in an article with other country abbreviations. In longer abbreviations that incorporate the country's initials (USN, USAF), never use periods. When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, US (or U.S.) may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (France and the United States, not France and the US). Do not use the spaced U. S. or the archaic U.S. of A., except when quoting.

Do not use U.S.A. or USA except in a quotation, as part of a proper name (Team USA), or in certain technical and formal uses (e.g., the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, FIFA, and IOC country codes).

Circa

To indicate approximately, the use of {{circa}}, showing as c., is preferred over circa, c., ca., or approx.

Avoid unwarranted use

Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal. For example:

• Do not use approx. for approximate(ly) except in an infobox or table (in which case use {{abbr|approx.|approximately}} at first occurrence: approx.).
• Do not use the legalism Holmes J for Justice Holmes.

Do not invent

Avoid devising new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, World Union of Billiards is good as a translation of Union Mondiale de Billard, but neither it nor the reduction WUB is used by the organization or by independent sources; use the original name and its official abbreviation, UMB.

If it is necessary to abbreviate in a tight space, such as a column header in a table, use widely recognized abbreviations. For example, for New Zealand gross national product, use NZ and GNP, with a link if the term has not already been written out in the article: NZ GNP. Do not make up initialisms such as NZGNP.

HTML tags and templates

Either <abbr> or {{abbr}} can be used for abbreviations and acronyms: <abbr title="World Health Organization">WHO</abbr> or {{abbr|WHO|World Health Organization}} will generate WHO; hovering over the rendered text causes a tooltip of the long form to pop up.

Ampersand

In normal text and headings, use and instead of the ampersand (&): January 1 and 2, not January 1 & 2. But retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, the title of a work, or a trademark, such as in Up & Down or AT&T. Elsewhere, ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion where space is extremely limited (e.g., tables and infoboxes). Quotations may be cautiously modified, especially for consistency where different editions are quoted, as modern editions of old texts routinely replace ampersands with and (just as they replace other disused glyphs, ligatures, and abbreviations). Another frequent permissible but not required use is in short bibliographic references to works by multiple authors, e.g.: <ref>Lubbers & Scheepers (2002); Van Hiel & Mervielde (2002); Swyngedouw & Giles (2007); Van Hiel (2012).</ref>.

Emphasis

Italics are used for emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals. But overuse diminishes its effect: consider rewriting instead.

Use <em>...</em> or {{em|...}} for emphasis. This allows user style sheets to handle emphasis in a customized way, and helps reusers and translators.

• Correct: The meerkat is <em>not</em> actually a cat.
• Correct: The meerkat is {{em|not}} actually a cat.

Titles

Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and artworks). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, storylines, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks.

Italics are not used for major religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these titles should also be in title case.

Words as words

Use italics when mentioning a word or character (see Use–mention distinction) or a string of words up to one sentence (the term panning is derived from panorama; the most common letter in English is e). When a whole sentence is mentioned, double quotation marks may be used instead, with consistency (The preposition in She sat on the chair is on; or The preposition in "She sat on the chair" is "on"). Quotation marks may also be used for shorter material to avoid confusion, such as when italics are already heavily used in the page for another purpose (e.g., for many non-English words and phrases). Mentioning (to discuss grammar, wording, punctuation, etc.) is different from quoting (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source). Quotation is done with quotation marks, never italics, nor both at once (see § Quotations for details).

A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms: The natural numbers are the integers greater than 0.

Non-English words

Italics are indicated for non-English phrases and isolated non-English words that are not commonly used in everyday English. However, proper names (such as place names) in other languages are not usually italicized, nor are terms in non-Latin scripts. The {{lang}} template and its variants support all ISO 639 language codes, correctly identifying the language and automatically italicizing for you. Please use these templates rather than just manually italicizing non-English material. (See WP:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Other languages for more information.)

Scientific names

Use italics for the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms except viruses at the genus level and below (italicize Panthera leo and Retroviridae, but not Felidae). The hybrid sign is not italicized (Rosa × damascena), nor is the "connecting term" required in three-part botanical names (Rosa gallica subsp. officinalis).

Quotations in italics

Do not put quotations in italics. Quotation marks (or block quoting) alone are sufficient and the correct ways to denote quotations. Italics should only be used if the quoted material would otherwise call for italics. (See below.)

Italics within quotations

Use italics within quotations to reproduce emphasis that exists in the source material or to indicate the use of non-English words. The emphasis is better done with {{em}}. If it is not clear that the source already included italics (or some other styling) for emphasis, or to indicate when emphasis was not used in the original text but was editorially added later, add the editorial note [emphasis in original] or [emphasis added], respectively, after the quotation.

• For example: "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." [emphasis in original].

Effect on nearby punctuation

Italicize only the elements of the sentence affected by the emphasis. Do not italicize surrounding punctuation.

• Incorrect: What are we to make of that? (The question mark applies to the whole sentence, not just to the emphasized that, so it should not be italicized.)
• Correct: What are we to make of that?
• Correct: Four of Patrick White's most famous novels are A Fringe of Leaves, The Aunt's Story, Voss, and The Tree of Man. (The commas, the period, and the word and are not italicized.)

Original wording

Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text must be faithfully reproduced. This is referred to as the principle of minimal change. Where there is good reason to change the wording, square bracket the changed text; for example, "Ocyrhoe told him his fate" might be quoted as "Ocyrhoe told [her father] his fate". Insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically). If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with {{sic}} (producing [sic] ) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia; for example, "his interview with the Dolly Llama [sic]". When applied to text that is linked, the syntax of the template may be adjusted to {{sic|nolink=y}} (producing [sic] in the resulting linked text; for example in the link: [sic] template). For the sake of accuracy and indexing, the titles of referenced sources should not be corrected for spelling, but minor typographic adjustments (like changing curly quotes to straight) may be made silently. Inline citations in the quoted text, to sources not used in the Wikipedia article, should be silently removed.

Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted text. Legitimate omissions include extraneous, irrelevant, or parenthetical words, and unintelligible speech (umm and hmm), but do not omit text where doing so would remove important context or alter the meaning of the text. Vulgarities and obscenities should be shown exactly as they appear in the quoted source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words (G-d d--n it!), but if the text being quoted itself does so, copy the text verbatim and use {{sic}} to indicate that the text is quoted as shown in the source.

In direct quotations, retain dialectal and archaic spellings, including capitalization (but not archaic glyphs and ligatures, as detailed below in § Typographic conformity).

Point of view

Quotation should be used, with attribution, to present emotive opinions that cannot be expressed in Wikipedia's own voice, but never to present cultural norms as simply opinional:

• Acceptable: Siskel and Ebert called the film "unforgettable".
• Unacceptable: The site is considered "sacred" by the religion's scriptures.

Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words, such as supposedly or so-called, might be inferred.

• Permissible: Siskel and Ebert called the film interesting.
• Unnecessary and may imply doubt: Siskel and Ebert called the film "interesting".
• Should be quoted: Siskel and Ebert called the film "interesting but heart-wrenching".

Typographic conformity

A quotation is not a facsimile and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud; for example:

• Normalize dashes and hyphens: see § Dashes. Use the style chosen for the article: unspaced em dash or spaced en dash.
• Convert apostrophes and quotation marks to Wikipedia's style:
  • These should be straight, not curly or slanted. See § Quotation marks.
  • When quoting a quotation that itself contains a quotation, alternate between using double and single quotes for each quotation. See § For a quotation within a quotation for details.
• When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language. If there are multiple styles for a language, the one used by the Wikipedia for that language is preferred unless the punctuation itself is under discussion.

  The cynical response "L'auteur aurait dû demander : « à quoi sert-il d'écrire ceci ? » mais ne l'a pas fait" was all he wrote.

• Remove spaces before punctuation such as periods and colons.
• Generally preserve bold and italics (see § Italics), but most other styling should be altered. Underlining, spac ing within words, colors, ALL CAPS, small caps, etc. should generally be normalized to plain text. If it clearly indicates emphasis, use italic emphasis ({{em}}) or, in an already-italic passage, boldface (with {{strong}}). For titles of books, articles, poems, and so forth, use italics or quotation marks following the guidance for titles. Italics can also be added to mark up non-English terms (with the {{lang}} template), for an organism's scientific name, and to indicate a words-as-words usage.
• Expand an abbreviation (not already used in the content before the quotation) as a square-bracketed change, or explain it using {{abbr}}.
• Normalize archaic glyphs and ligatures in English that are unnecessary to the meaning (except in proper names and for languages where ligatures are standard, per § Ampersand and § Ligatures). Examples include æ→ae, œ→oe, ſ→s, and þ^e→the.

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles § Typographic conformity for special considerations in normalizing the typography of titles of works.

However, national varieties should not be changed, as these may involve changes in vocabulary. For example, a quotation from a British source should retain British spelling, even in an article that otherwise uses American spelling. (See § Consistency within articles.)

Numbers also usually should not be reformatted.

Direct quotation should not be used to preserve the formatting preferred by an external publisher (especially when the material would otherwise be unchanged), as this tends to have the effect of scare-quoting:

• Acceptable: The animal is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
• Unacceptable: The animal is listed as "Endangered" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Italics can be used to mark a particular usage as a term of art (a case of "words as words"), especially when it is unfamiliar or should not be reworded by a non-expert:

• Permissible: The animal is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

When quoting a complete sentence, it is usually recommended to keep the first word capitalized. However, if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (for example, with an introduction such as "X said that"), the original capital letter may be lower-cased.

• LaVesque's report stated: "The equipment was selected for its low price. This is the primary reason for criticism of the program."
• LaVesque's report said that "the equipment was selected for its low price".
• The program was criticized primarily because "the equipment was selected for its low price", according to LaVesque.

It is normally unnecessary to note changes in capitalization. However, for more precision, the altered letter may be put inside square brackets: "The" → "[t]he".

• The program was criticized primarily because "[t]he equipment was selected for its low price", according to LaVesque.

Attribution

The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. The source must be named in article text if the quotation is an opinion (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Attributing and specifying biased statements). When attributing a quotation, avoid characterizing it in a biased manner.

Quotations within quotations

See § For a quotation within a quotation.

Linking

Be conservative when linking within quotations; link only to targets that correspond to the meaning clearly intended by the quote's author. Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after. (If quoting hypertext, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate, to avoid ambiguity as to whether the link was made by the original author.)

Block quotations

Format a long quotation (more than about forty words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, using the {{blockquote}} template. The text presented in block quotations and quote boxes (see below) should not itself be enclosed in quotation marks (including large, "decorative"-type quotation marks). Block quotations and quote boxes using a colored background are also discouraged.

Use {{blockquote}} and similar markup only for actual quotations; indentation for other purposes is done differently.

It is conventional to precede a block quotation with an introductory sentence (or sentence fragment) and append the source citation to that line. Alternatively, the {{blockquote}} template provides parameters for attribution and citation which will appear below the quotation. (For use of dashes with attributions, see § Other uses for em dashes.) This below-quotation attribution style is intended for famous quotations and is unusual in articles because it may strike an inappropriate tone. A quotation with no cited source should be flagged with {{quote without source}}, or deleted.

Since line breaks and indentation are generally ignored inside {{blockquote}} or <blockquote>, use <poem> or {{poem quote}} for poetry, lyrics, and similar material. Such material can also be quoted inline, with line breaks indicated by {{nbsp}}/, and paragraph or stanza breaks by {{nbsp}}//. For example: "And, as in uffish thought he stood, / The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, / Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, / And burbled as it came! // One, two! One, two! And through and through / The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"

A {{Quote box}} is an alternative to an inline quote or a block quote. Quote boxes are displayed in a stand-alone manner (similar to images) and are best suited to noteworthy or important quotations. They can create point of view or undue weight issues, because the quotations are not put in context or integrated into the text of the article. Therefore, they must be used with particular care.

Pull quotes do not belong in Wikipedia articles. These are the news and magazine style of "pulling" material already in the article to reuse it in attention-grabbing decorative quotations. This unencyclopedic approach is a form of editorializing, produces out-of-context and undue emphasis, and may lead the reader to conclusions not supported in the material.

Excessive quotation of copyrighted text (whether or not formatted as a blockquote, and even if credited to its source) is prohibited. See Wikipedia:Quotations § Copyrighted material and fair use.

Non-English quotations

Quotations from non-English language sources should appear with a translation into English, preferably a modern one. Quotations that are translations should be explicitly distinguished from those that are not. Indicate the original source of a translation (if it is available, and not first published within Wikipedia), and the original language (if that is not clear from the context).

If the original, untranslated text is available, provide a reference for it or include it, as appropriate.

When editors themselves translate text into English, care must always be taken to include the original text, in italics (except for non-Latin-based writing systems, and best done with the {{lang}} or {{langx}} templates, which both italicize as appropriate and provide language metadata); and to use actual and (if at all possible) common English words in the translation. Unless you are certain of your competency to translate something, see Wikipedia:Translation for assistance.

Apostrophes

• Use straight apostrophes ('), not curly apostrophes (’). Do not use accent marks or backticks (`) as apostrophes.
• Templates such as {{`}} and {{`s}} are helpful when an apostrophe (or single quote) appears at the beginning or end of text in italics or bold, because italics and bold are themselves indicated by sequences of single quotes.
  • When an apostrophe follows italicized text, {{'}} or {{'s}} can be used to additionally prevent the last letter of the right-leaning text from intersecting the apostrophe. Example: the Iliad's themes (markup: the ''Iliad''{{'s}} themes).
• Letters resembling apostrophes and curly quotes, such as the ʻokina (ʻ – inserted using {{okina}}), saltillo (ꞌ – {{saltillo}}), Hebrew ayin or Arabic ʿayn (ʽ – {{ayin}}), and Arabic hamza (ʼ – {{hamza}}), should be represented by those templates or by their respective Unicode characters. (Basic Arabic transliteration, which uses an ASCII apostrophe, is preferred in most cases by Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Arabic; these other characters are only used in strict transliteration.)
  • Templates cannot be used in article titles; use the corresponding Unicode character directly. Per Wikipedia:Article titles § Special characters, also make a redirect from the ASCII form to aid searches. Forms without apostrophe-like characters are sometimes preferred by Wikipedia:Article titles §  Use commonly recognizable names (e.g. Hawaii but not Kealiʻi Reichel).

  See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Hawaii-related articles § Orthography, spelling and formatting

• For Wade–Giles romanizations of Mandarin Chinese, use {{wg-apos}}.
• For languages with ejective consonants and the like, use {{hamza}}.
• For the Cyrillic soft sign, when indicated at all, use {{softsign}} or {{hamza}}.
• For usage of the possessive apostrophe, see § Possessives.
• For further treatment of apostrophe usage (possessive, elision, formation of certain plurals, non-English language issues), see the article Apostrophe.

Quotation marks

In the material below, the term quotation includes conventional uses of quotation marks such as for titles of songs, chapters, episodes, and so on. Quotation marks are also used in other contexts, such as in cultivar names.

Brackets and parentheses

This section applies to both round brackets ( ), often called parentheses, and square brackets [ ].

If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here). However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should usually be preceded by a space. This may not be the case if it is preceded by an opening quotation mark, another opening bracket, or a portion of a word:

• He rose to address the meeting: "(Ahem) ... Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!"
• Only the royal characters in the play ([Prince] Hamlet and his family) habitually speak in blank verse.
• We journeyed on the Inter[continental].
• Most people are right-handed. (Some people are left-handed, but that does not make right-handed people "better" than left-handed people.)

There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.

Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite:

• Avoid: Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885 – 1919) (also known as Matvii Hryhoriiv) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
• Better: Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885 – 1919; also known as Matvii Hryhoriiv) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
• Better: Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885 – 1919) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader. He was also known as Matvii Hryhoriiv.

Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning. They serve three main purposes:

• To clarify: She attended [secondary] school, where this was the intended meaning, but the type of school was unstated in the original sentence.
• To reduce the size of a quotation: X contains Y, and under certain circumstances, X may contain Z as well may be reduced to X contains Y [and sometimes Z]. When an ellipsis (...) is used to indicate that material is removed from a direct quotation, it should not normally be bracketed. (See § Ellipses for an exceptional case.)
• To make the grammar work: Referring to someone's statement "I hate to do laundry", one could properly write She "hate[s] to do laundry".

If a sentence includes subsidiary material enclosed in square or round brackets, it must still carry terminal punctuation after those brackets, regardless of any punctuation within the brackets.

However, if the entire sentence is within brackets, the closing punctuation falls within the brackets. (This sentence is an example.)

Ellipses

Use an ellipsis if material is omitted in the course of a quotation, unless square brackets are used to gloss the quotation.

• For prose and non-LaTeX mathematics formulae, ellipses are written using three unspaced dots (...); do not use the precomposed ellipsis character (…) or three dots separated by spaces (. . .)
• Generally, use a non-breaking space before an ellipsis and a regular space after it: Alpha, Bravo,{{nbsp}}... Zulu
• If an ellipsis is followed by . ? ! : ; , ) ] } or a closing quotation mark (single or double), omit the space after it. Place terminal punctuation inside the quote only if it is textually important, as is often the case with exclamation marks and question marks but rarely with periods:

  Jones wrote: "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully{{nbsp}}...".

  "But what of the other cities? London, Paris{{nbsp}}...?"

• If the ellipsis immediately follows an opening quotation mark, only use a non-breaking space after it:

  He continued to pursue Smith ("...{{nbsp}}to the ends of the earth", he had sworn) until his own death.

• To distinguish an ellipsis that indicates omitted text from one that is part of the quote, you can surround the former with square brackets: She retorted: "How do I feel? How do you think I ... This is too much! [...] Take me home!"
• When an ellipsis is used to represent a pause in or suspense of speech, retain the original punctuation: Virginia's startled reply was "Could he ...? No, I can't believe it!". When used inside an incomplete word, no space is used between the word fragment(s) and the ellipsis: The garbled transmission ended with "We are stranded near San L...o", interpreted as either San Leandro or San Lorenzo.
• In LaTeX-formatted mathematics formulae, use the proper LaTeX markup for lowered dots (\dots, ${\displaystyle \dots }$) or the precomposed characters that have dots in other positions (such as centered or diagonal, ⋯, ⋰, or ⋱)

Commas

A pair of commas can bracket an appositive, relative clause, or parenthetical phrase (as can brackets or dashes, though with greater interruption of the sentence). For example:

Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma:

Don't let other punctuation distract you from the need for a comma, especially when the comma collides with a bracket or parenthesis:

In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g. city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by terminal punctuation or a closing parenthesis. The last element is treated as parenthetical.

Also include commas when the geographical element is used as a disambiguator:

Include a second comma also when a construction with a comma modifies a noun or compound noun:

Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation. The last element is treated as parenthetical.

Place quotation marks by following § Punctuation inside or outside. This is known as "logical quotation".

A comma may be included before a quotation embedded within a sentence (see § Quotation marks).

Colons

A colon (:) introduces something that demonstrates, explains, or modifies what has come before, or is a list of items that has just been introduced. The items in such a list may be separated by commas, or if they are more complex and perhaps themselves contain commas, the items should be separated by semicolons or arranged in a bulleted list.

A colon may also be used to introduce direct speech enclosed within quotation marks. (See § Quotation marks.)

When a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles.

Except in technical usage (a 3:1 ratio), no sentence should contain multiple colons, no space should precede a colon, and a space (but never a hyphen or dash) should follow the colon.

Semicolons

A semicolon (;) is sometimes an alternative to a full stop (period), enabling related material to be kept in the same sentence; it marks a more decisive division in a sentence than a comma. If the semicolon separates clauses, normally each clause must be independent (meaning that it could stand on its own as a sentence). In many cases, only a comma or only a semicolon will be correct in a given sentence.

Above, "Though he had been here before" cannot stand on its own as a sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause.

This incorrect use of a comma between two independent clauses is known as a comma splice; however, in certain kinds of cases, a comma may be used where a semicolon would seem to be called for:

A sentence may contain several semicolons, especially when the clauses are parallel in construction and meaning; multiple unrelated semicolons are often signs that the sentence should be divided into shorter sentences or otherwise refashioned.

Semicolons are used in addition to commas to separate items in a listing, when commas alone would result in confusion.

Hyphens

Four-year-old children

Four year-old children

Four-year old children

A man eating fish

A man-eating fish

Officials help dog-bite victim.

Officials help dog bite victim.

Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses:

1. In hyphenated personal names (John Lennard-Jones, Omar al-Bashir).
2. To link prefixes and suffixes with their main terms in certain constructions, unless the compounds themselves include a space or hyphen: quasi-scientific, ultra-nationalistic, London-based, community-led.
   • A hyphen may be used to distinguish between homographs (re-sign means sign again, but resign means relinquish ownership or leave a job).
   • There is a clear trend to join both elements in all varieties of English (subsection, nonlinear). Hyphenation clarifies when the letters brought into contact are the same (non-negotiable, sub-basement) or are vowels (pre-industrial), or where a word is uncommon (co-proposed, re-target) or may be misread (sub-era, not subera). Some words of these sorts are nevertheless common without the hyphen (e.g., cooperation is more frequently attested than co-operation in contemporary English). Beware of words that change their meaning without the hyphen, e.g. re-creation (create again) and recreation (amusement).
3. To link related terms in compound modifiers:
   • Hyphens can aid ease of reading (that is, they can be ease-of-reading aids) and are particularly useful in long noun phrases: gas-phase reaction dynamics. But never insert a hyphen into a proper name (Middle Eastern cuisine, not Middle-Eastern cuisine).
   • A hyphen can help to disambiguate (some short-story writers are quite tall; a government-monitoring program is a program that monitors the government, whereas a government monitoring program is a government program that monitors).
   • Compounds that are hyphenated when used attributively (adjectives before the nouns they qualify: a light-blue handbag, a 34-year-old woman) or substantively (as a noun: she is a 34-year-old) are usually not hyphenated when used predicatively (descriptive phrase separated from the noun: the handbag was light blue, the woman is 34 years old). Where there would otherwise be a loss of clarity, however, a hyphen may be used in the predicative form as well (hand-fed turkeys, the turkeys were hand-fed). Awkward attributive hyphenation can sometimes be avoided with a simple rewording: Hawaiian-native species → native Hawaiian species.
   • Avoid using a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home, a wholly owned subsidiary) unless part of a larger compound (a slowly-but-surely strategy). In rare cases, a hyphen can improve clarity if a rewritten alternative is awkward, but rewording is usually preferable: The idea was clearly stated enough can be disambiguated as The idea clearly was stated often enough or The idea was stated with enough clarity.
   • A few words ending in -ly function as both adjectives and adverbs (a kindly-looking teacher; a kindly provided facility). Some such dual-purpose words (like early, only, northerly) are not standard -ly adverbs, because they are not formed by addition of -ly to an independent current-English adjective. These need careful treatment: Early flowering plants appeared around 130 million years ago, but Early-flowering plants risk damage from winter frosts; only child actors (no adult actors) but only-child actors (actors without siblings).
   • A hyphen is normally used when the adverb well precedes a participle used attributively (a well-meaning gesture; but normally a very well managed firm, because well itself is modified) and even predicatively, if well is necessary to, or alters, the sense of the adjective rather than simply intensifying it (the gesture was well-meaning, the child was well-behaved, but the floor was well polished).
   • In some cases, such as diode–transistor logic, the independent status of the linked elements requires an en dash instead of a hyphen.
   • Shortcut

     • MOS:SUSPENDEDMOS:SUSPENDED
     Use a suspended hyphen (also called a hanging hyphen) when two compound modifiers are separated (two- and three-digit numbers; a ten-car or -truck convoy; sloping right- or leftward).
   • Values and units used as compound modifiers are hyphenated only where the unit is given as a whole word; when using the unit symbol, separate it from the number with a non-breaking space ( ).
     • Incorrect: 9-mm gap
       Correct:    9 mm gap (markup: 9 mm gap)
     • Incorrect: 9 millimetre gap
       Correct:    9-millimetre gap
     • Correct: 12-hour shift
       Correct: 12 h shift (markup: 12 h shift)

Multi-word hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated modifiers by rewording (a four-CD soundtrack album may be easier to read as a soundtrack album of four CDs). This is particularly important where converted units are involved (the 6-hectare-limit (14.8-acre-limit) rule might be possible as the rule imposing a limit of six hectares (14.8 acres), and the ungainly 4.9-mile (7.9 km) -long tributary as 4.9-mile-long (7.9 km) tributary or simply 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary).

For optional hyphenation of compound points of the compass such as southwest/south-west, see § Compass points.

Do not use a capital letter after a hyphen except for a proper name following the hyphen: Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean-style, but not Gandhi-Like. In titles of published works, when given in title case, follow the capitalization rule for each part independently (The Out-of-Towners), unless reliable sources consistently do otherwise in a particular case (The History of Middle-earth).

Hyphenation rules in other languages may be different. Thus, in French a place name such as Trois-Rivières ('Three Rivers') is hyphenated, when it would not be in English. Follow reliable sources in such cases.

Spacing: A hyphen is never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging (see above) or when used to reference parts of words independently, such as the prefix sub- and the suffix ‑less.

Image filenames and redirects: Image filenames are not part of the encyclopedic content; they are tools. They are most useful if they can be readily typed, so they usually use hyphens instead of dashes. Similarly, article titles with dashes should also have a corresponding redirect from a copy of the title with hyphens: for example, Michelson-Morley experiment redirects to Michelson–Morley experiment.

Non-breaking: A non-breaking hyphen ({{nbhyph}}) will not be used as a point of line-wrap.

Soft hyphens: Use soft hyphens to mark locations where a word will be broken and hyphenated if necessary at the end of a line of text, usually in very long words or narrow spaces (such as captions, narrow table columns, or text adjacent to a very wide image), for example: {{shy|Penn|syl|va|nia and Mass|a|chu|setts style themselves com|mon|wealths.}}. Use sparingly to avoid making wikitext difficult to read and edit. For more information, see Help:Line-break handling.

Encoding: The hyphen is represented by the ASCII/UNICODE HYPHEN-MINUS character, which is entered by the hyphen or minus key on all standard keyboards. Do not use the UNICODE HYPHEN character.

Dashes

Two forms of dash are used on Wikipedia: en dash (–) and em dash (—). To enter them, click on them in the CharInsert toolbar, type {{endash}} or {{emdash}}, or use other methods.

Do not use one or more hyphens in place of a dash.

To ensure the consistent and clear use of dashes, Wikipedia adopts the following principles:

Slashes

Generally, avoid joining two words with a slash (a.k.a. forward slash, stroke, or solidus), because it suggests that the words are related without specifying how. Replace with clearer wording. In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash (see above) is usually preferable to the slash: the digital–analog distinction.

For example: The parent/instructor must be present at all times.

• Must both be present? → The parent and the instructor
• Must at least one be present? → The parent or the instructor
• Are they the same person? → The parent-instructor

An unspaced slash may be used:

• to indicate phonemic pronunciations (rivet is pronounced /ˈrɪvət/);
• in a fraction (7/8 or xⁿ/n!), but prefer the division operator ( ÷ ) when representing elementary arithmetic in prose (10 ÷ 2 = 5) and a fraction bar (${\displaystyle \textstyle {\frac {x^{n}}{n!}}}$) in more advanced mathematical formulas (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers §§ Common mathematical symbols​ and Fractions and ratios and Help:Displaying a formula);
• to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years (e.g., the 2009/2010 fiscal year), if that is the convention used in reliable sources (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Long periods of time for further explanation);
• to express a ratio, in a form in which a slash is conventionally used (e.g., the price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E ratio for short);

A spaced or unspaced slash may be used:

• in an expression or abbreviation widely used outside Wikipedia (e.g., N/A for not applicable or the NY 31 east / NY 370 exit).

A spaced slash may be used:

• to separate alternative terms when at least one of the alternatives is a multi-word expression (Aoraki / Mount Cook or "Gone, Gone / Thank You")
• to separate run-on lines in quoted poetry or song (To be or not to be: that is the question: / Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune);
• rarely, to mark paragraph breaks in quoted prose, where they are textually important.

To avoid awkward line breaks, code spaced slashes (and fraction slashes) with a non-breaking space on the left and a normal space on the right, as in: My mama told me / You better shop around. For short constructions, both spaces should be non-breaking: N / A. On the other hand, if two long words are connected by an unspaced slash, a {{wbr}} added after the slash will allow a line break at that point.

Do not use the backslash character ( \ ) in place of a slash.

Symbols

Unicode symbols are preferred over composed ASCII symbols for improved readability and accessibility. Be mindful of presentations that may require ASCII, like source code. Keys for these symbols can be found at the bottom of the Source Editor.

Number (pound, hash) sign and numero

Avoid using the # symbol (known as the number sign, hash sign, pound sign, or octothorpe) when referring to numbers or rankings. Instead write number, No. or Nos.; do not use the symbol №. For example:

Exceptions:

• Issue numbers of comic books which, unlike other periodicals, are conventionally presented in text with the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7.
• Periodical publications carrying both issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text.

When using the abbreviations, write {{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}, {{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}, {{abbr|No.|Number}}, or {{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}, at first occurrence.

Terminal punctuation

Question marks or exclamation marks have almost no application in encyclopedic writing. Where a word or phrase that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence, do not add a second terminal punctuation mark. If the word or phrase ends in a question mark or exclamation mark, readers may find the sentence confusing, so it is usually better to reword so that the mark appears mid-sentence.

Not all contexts require terminal punctuation. Captions, list entries, and similar sentence fragments in most cases should not end with a period. Such constructions may also begin with a lowercase letter in some situations; see § Formatting of captions and § Bulleted and numbered lists. For guidance specific to captions and lists, see § Formatting of captions and § Bulleted and numbered lists.

Punctuation and footnotes

Footnotes (also called endnotes or simply notes), used as citation footnotes and sometimes explanatory notes, are created using reference tags (<ref>...</ref>). Reference tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, with no intervening space. Apart from the exceptions listed below, references are placed after adjacent punctuation, not before. Adjacent reference tags should have no space between them, nor should there be any between tags and inline dispute and cleanup templates. For example:

• Flightless birds have a reduced keel,^[10] and they also have smaller wing bones than flying birds of similar size.^[11][12]

However, reference tags are placed before dashes, not after. If a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the tags belong just before the closing parenthesis. For example:

• Paris is not the capital city of England—the capital of which is London^[10]—but that of France.^[11]
• Kim Jong-un (Korean: 김정은; Hanja: 金正恩^[10]) is the Supreme Leader of North Korea.^[11]

When reference tags are used, a footnote list must be added, and this is usually placed in the References section, near the end of the article in the standard appendices and footers.

Punctuation after formulae

Place punctuation after mathematical formulae in sentences as if they were normal body text. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics § Punctuation after formulae.

Spacing

Words and sentences are separated by a single space. In the wiki source, repeated spaces or a single newline may also be used, since these are rendered as a single space.

Never put a space before a comma, semicolon, colon, period, question mark, or exclamation mark, even in quoted material.

Time of day

Times of day are normally expressed in figures rather than words. Context determines whether the 12- or the 24-hour format is more appropriate.

• Twelve-hour clock times are written in one of two forms: 11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., or 11:15 am and 2:30 pm (wherein the spaces should be non-breaking). Use noon and midnight rather than 12 pm and 12 am; it may need to be specified whether midnight refers to the start or end of a date.
• Twenty-four-hour clock times are written in the form 08:15 and 22:55, with no suffix. Midnight written as 00:00 begins the day; 24:00 ends it.

Dates

Full dates are formatted 10 June 1921 or June 10, 1921; or where the year is omitted, use 10 June or June 10.

• The dates in the text of any one article should all have the same format (day-first or month-first).
  • For date formats in citations, see Wikipedia:Citing sources § Citation style.
  • Dates in quotations and titles are always left as-is.
  • If a numerical format is required (e.g., for conciseness in lists and tables), use the YYYY-MM-DD format: 2005-04-23.
• Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that country (month-first for the US, except in military usage; day-first for most others; articles related to Canada may use either consistently). Otherwise, do not change an article from one date format to the other without good reason.

Months

• For month and year, write June 1921, with no comma.
• Abbreviations for months, such as Feb, are used only where space is extremely limited. Such abbreviations should use three letters only, and should not be followed by a period (full point) except at the end of a sentence.

Seasons

• Avoid ambiguous references to seasons, which are different in the southern and northern hemispheres.
• Names of seasons may be used when there is a logical connection to the event being described (the autumn harvest) or when referring to a phase of a natural yearly cycle (migration typically starts in mid-spring). Otherwise, neutral wording is usually preferable (He was elected in November 1992, not He was elected in the fall of 1992).
• Journals and other publications that are issued seasonally (e.g., "Summer 2005") should be dated as such in citations (for more information, see Wikipedia:Citing sources § Seasonal publication dates and differing calendar systems).

Years and longer periods

• Do not use the year before the digits (1995, not the year 1995), unless the meaning would otherwise be unclear.
• Decades are written in the format the 1980s, with no apostrophe. Use the two-digit form ('80s) only with an established social or cultural meaning. Avoid forms such as the 1700s that could refer to ten or a hundred years.
• Years are denoted by AD and BC or, equivalently, CE and BCE. Use only one system within an article, and do not change from one system to the other without good reason. The abbreviations are written without periods, and with a non-breaking space, as in 5 BC. Omit AD or CE unless omitting it would cause ambiguity.

More information on all the above topics can be found at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Chronological items, including the handling of dates expressed in different calendars, and times corresponding to different time zones.

Current

Terms such as "current", "now", and "recent" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text. To help keep information updated use {{As of}}, which will allow editors to catalog and update dated statements.

Numbers

• Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words. Integers greater than nine expressible in one or two words may be expressed either in numerals or in words. Other numbers are given in numerals or in forms such as 21 million. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Numbers as figures or words.
• In general, in numbers with five or more digits to the left of the decimal point, use commas to group those digits. Numbers with four digits are at the editor's discretion: 12,345, but either 1,000 or 1000. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Grouping of digits.
• In general, use decimals rather than fractions for measurements, but fractions are sometimes used with imperial and US customary units. Keep articles internally consistent.
• Scientific notation (e.g., 5.8×10⁷ kg) is preferred in scientific contexts. Markup: {{val|5.8|e=7|u=kg}}.
• Write out "million" and "billion" on the first use. After that, unspaced "M" can be used for millions and "bn" for billions: 70M and 25bn. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Numbers as figures or words for similar words.
• Write 3%, three percent, or three per cent, but not 3 % (with a space) or three %. "Percent" is American usage, and "per cent" is British usage (see § National varieties of English). In ranges of percentages written with an en dash, write only a single percent sign: 3–14%.
• Indicate uncertainties as e.g., (1.534±0.35)×10²³ m. Markup: {{val|1.534|0.35|e=23|u=m}}. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Uncertainty and rounding for other formats.

Currencies

• Use the full abbreviation on first use (US$ for the US dollar and A$ for the Australian dollar), unless the currency is already clear from context. For example, the government of the United States always spends money in American dollars, and never in Canadian or Australian dollars.
• Use only one symbol with ranges, as in $250–300.
• In articles that are not specific to a country, express amounts of money in United States dollars, euros, or pounds sterling. Do not link the names or symbols of currencies that are commonly known to English-speakers ($, €, £), unless there is a particular reason to do so; do not use potentially ambiguous currency symbols, unless the meaning is clear in the context.
• In country-specific articles, use the currency of the country. On first occurrence, consider including conversion to US dollars, euros, or pounds sterling, at a rate appropriate to the context. For example, Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor (€1.0M as of August 2009). Wording such as "approx." is not appropriate for simple rounding-off of the converted amount.
• Generally, use the full name of a currency, and link it on its first appearance if English-speakers are likely to be unfamiliar with it (52 Nepalese rupees); subsequent occurrences can use the currency sign (just 88 Rs).
• Most currency symbols are placed before the number, and unspaced ($123 not $ 123).

Units of measurement

• The main unit in which a quantity is expressed should generally be an SI unit or non-SI unit officially accepted for use with the SI. However,
  • Scientific articles may also use specialist units appropriate for the branch of science in question.
  • In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United States, the main unit is generally a US customary unit (22 pounds (10 kg)).
  • In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United Kingdom, although the main unit is generally a metric unit (10 kilograms (22 lb)), imperial units are still used as the main units in some contexts (7 miles (11 km) by road).
• Where English-speaking countries use different units for the same measurement, provide a conversion in parentheses. Examples: the Mississippi River is 2,320 miles (3,734 km) long; the Murray River is 2,375 kilometres (1,476 mi) long. See {{convert}}.
• In a direct quotation, always retain the source's units. Any conversion should follow in square brackets (or, an obscure use of units can be explained in the article text or a footnote).
• Where space is limited (such as tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas) unit symbols are preferred. In prose, unit names should be given in full if used only a few times but symbols may be used when a unit (especially one with a long name) is used repeatedly after spelling out the first use (e.g., Up to 15 kilograms of filler is used for a batch of 250 kg), except for unit names that are hardly ever spelled out (°C rather than degrees Celsius).
• Most unit names are not capitalized (see § National varieties of English for spelling differences).
• Use "per" when writing out a unit, rather than a slash: metre per second, not metre/second.
• Units unfamiliar to general readers should be presented as a name–symbol pair on first use, linking the unit name (Energies were originally 2.3 megaelectronvolts (MeV), but were eventually 6 MeV).
• For ranges, see § Number ranges and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers §§ Date ranges, Percentages, Unit names and symbols, and Formatting of monetary values.
• Unit symbols are preceded by figures, not by spelled-out numbers. Values and unit symbols are separated by a non-breaking space. For example, 5 min. The percent sign and units of degrees, minutes, and seconds for angles and coordinates are unspaced.

Common mathematical symbols

• For a negative sign or subtraction operator, use a minus sign (−, Unicode character U+2212 MINUS SIGN). Input by clicking on it in the insert box beneath the edit window or by typing −.
• For multiplication, use a multiplication sign (U+00D7 × MULTIPLICATION SIGN) or a dot (U+22C5 ⋅ DOT OPERATOR), which are input by clicking on them in the edit toolbox under the edit window or by entering × or ⋅. Care should be taken not to confuse the dot operator (in the "Math and logic" section of the edit toolbox) with an interpunct (in the "Insert" section of the edit toolbox) or a bullet. The letter x should not be used to indicate multiplication, but it is used (unspaced) as the substitute for "by" in terms such as 4x4.
• Exponentiation is indicated by a superscript, aⁿ (typed as ''a''<sup>''n''</sup>.
• Do not use programming language notation outside computer program text. In most programming languages, subtraction, multiplication, and exponentiation are represented by the hyphen-minus -, the asterisk *, and either the caret ^ or the double asterisk ** respectively; scientific notation is replaced by E notation.
• Symbols for binary operators and relations are usually spaced on both sides:
  • plus, minus, and plus-or-minus (as binary operators): +, −, ± (as in 5 − 3);
  • multiplication and division: ×, ÷;
  • equals, does not equal, equals approximately: =, ≠, ≈;
  • is less than, is less than or equal to, is greater than, is greater than or equal to: <, ≤, >, ≥.
• Symbols for unary operators are closed-up to their operand:
  • positive, negative, and positive-or-negative signs: +, −, ± (as in −3);
  • other unary operators, such as the exclamation mark as a factorial sign (as in 5!).
• Variables are italicized, but digits and punctuation are not; only x and y are italicized in 2(5x + y)².
• {{math}} can be used to style formulas to distinguish them from surrounding text. For single variables, {{mvar}} is handy.

Possessives

Pronouns

Plurals

Words adopted into English take the plurals shown in appropriate English dictionaries, otherwise we follow the pluralization conventions of the native language.

Some collective nouns – such as team (and proper names of them), army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party – may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it. In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context (but singular is not actually incorrect). In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is that when a sports team is referred to by its short name, plural verbs are commonly used, e.g. the Heat are playing the Lakers tonight.

Names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (even when grammatically plural: the United States is in North America, the Netherlands is also known as Holland), but exceptionally in British English, typically when used to refer to a sports team named after a town or country or when discussing actions of a government, plural is used. For example, in England are playing Germany tomorrow, England refers to a football team; but in England is in the Northern hemisphere, it refers to the country. See also § National varieties of English including § Opportunities for commonality.

Verb tense

By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction (see Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Tense in fiction) and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, use past tense only for past events and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist, such as deceased people or defunct companies. Use past tense for articles about periodicals no longer produced, with common-sense exceptions.

• The PDP-10 is a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1966 into the 1980s.
• Earth: Final Conflict is a Canadian science fiction television series that ran for five seasons between October 6, 1997, and May 20, 2002.
• The Gordon Riots of 1780 were several days of rioting in London motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment.
• The Beatles were an English rock band that formed in Liverpool in 1960.
• Barack Obama is a former president of the United States (not Barack Obama was a president of the United States).
• Jumbo Comics was an adventure anthology comic book published by Fiction House from 1938 to 1953.
• A Prairie Home Companion is a radio show that aired live from 1974 to 2016 (not A Prairie Home Companion was a radio show).
• Flappy Bird is a mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen (not Flappy Bird was a mobile game).

Tense can be used to distinguish between current and former status of a subject: Dún Aonghasa is the ruin of a prehistoric Irish cliff fort. Its original shape was presumably oval or D-shaped, but parts of the cliff and fort have since collapsed into the sea.

Always use present tense for verbs that describe genres, types, and classes, even if the subject of the description (e.g. program, library, device) no longer exists, is discontinued, is unsupported or is unmaintained. Present tense is also used for discontinued television shows.

Contractions

Avoid contractions, which have little place in formal writing. For example, write do not instead of don't. Use of o'clock is an exception. Contracted titles such as Dr. and St generally should not be used but may apply in some contexts (e.g., quoted material, place names, titles of works).

Gender-neutral language

Use gender-neutral language – avoiding the generic he, for example – if this can be done with clarity and precision. This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works (The Ascent of Man), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (When any student breaks that rule, she loses privileges).

References to space programs, past, present and future, should use gender-neutral phrasing: human spaceflight, robotic probe, astronaut, cosmonaut, uncrewed mission, crewed spacecraft, piloted, unpiloted, not manned or unmanned. Direct quotations and proper nouns that use gendered words should not be changed, like Manned Maneuvering Unit.

Contested vocabulary

Avoid words and phrases that give the impression of straining for formality, that are unnecessarily regional, or that are not widely accepted. See also § Identity.

Instructional and presumptuous language

Avoid phrases such as remember that and note that, which address readers in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional. They are a subtle form of Wikipedia self-reference, "breaking the fourth wall". Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place.

Do not tell readers that something is interesting, ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, curious, coincidental, etc. Simply present sourced facts neutrally and let readers draw their own conclusions. Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: Note that this was naturally subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. becomes This was subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. Similar variants which indirectly instruct readers, such as It should be noted that or It is important to note that, may be rewritten by leaving out those words: It is important to note that the colloquial dialect of Portuñol is similar to but different from Mirandese becomes just The colloquial dialect of Portuñol is similar to but different from Mirandese.

Avoid rhetorical questions, especially in headings. Use a heading of Active listening and text such as The term active listening, coined in ..., not What is active listening?

For issues in the use of cross-references – e.g., (see also Bulverism) – see § Second-person pronouns.

Subset terms

A subset term identifies a set of members of a larger class. Common subset terms are including, among, and etc. Avoid redundant subset terms (e.g., mis-constructions like Among the most well-known members of the fraternity are included two members of the Onassis family or The elements in stars include hydrogen, helium, etc.). The word including does not introduce a complete list; instead, use consisting of, or composed of.

Identity

When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by recent reliable sources. If it is unclear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses.

Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by Wikipedia content policies, such as those on verifiability, and neutral point of view (and article titles when the term appears in the title of an article).

Use specific terminology. For example, it is often more appropriate for people or things from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) to be described as Ethiopian, not carelessly (with the risk of stereotyping) as African.

Non-English terms

Technical language

Some topics are necessarily technical; however, editors should seek to write articles accessible to the greatest possible number of readers. Minimize the use of jargon, and adequately explain its meaning when it is used. Overly technical material can be tagged with {{Technical}} or {{Technical statement}}, so that it can be addressed by other editors. For topics that require a more technical approach, the creation of a separate introductory article (like Introduction to general relativity) may be a solution.

Excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) can result from trying too hard to avoid putting explanations in parenthetical statements, like the one that appeared earlier in this sentence. Do not introduce specialized words solely to teach them to the reader when more widely understood alternatives will do.

When the concepts underlying the jargon used in an article are too complex to explain concisely in a parenthetical, write one level down. For example, consider adding a brief background section with {{main}} tags pointing to articles with a fuller treatment of the prerequisite material. This approach is practical only when the prerequisite concepts are central to the exposition of the article's main topic and when such prerequisites are not too numerous. Short articles, such as stubs, generally do not have such sections.

For italicization and other markup of introduced terms, see: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Words as words.

Geographical items

Geographical or place names are the nouns used to refer to specific places and geographic features. These names often give rise to conflict, because the same places are called different things by different peoples speaking different languages. Many place names have a historical context that should be preserved, but common sense should prevail. There can be few places that have not been parts of more than one culture or have had only one name. As proper nouns, all such place names (but not terms for types of places) have major words capitalized.

A place should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of its article (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)). An exception may be made when there is a widely accepted historical English name appropriate to the given context. In cases where such a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in round brackets (parentheses) on the first occurrence of the name in applicable sections of the article. As with linking, this should not be done to the detriment of style. On the other hand, it is probably better to provide such a variant too often than too rarely. If more than one historical name is applicable for a given context, the other names should be added after the modern English name, for example: "Constantinople (Istanbul, Byzantium)".

This is an English-language encyclopedia, so established English names are preferred if they exist, and spellings in non-English alphabets should always be transcribed into the Roman alphabet. In general, other articles should refer to places by the names which are used in the articles on those places, according to the rules described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). If a different name is appropriate in a given historical or other context, then that may be used instead, although it is normal to follow the first occurrence of such a name with the standard modern name in parentheses.

At the start of an article, provide notable equivalent names from other languages, including transcriptions where necessary:

Cologne (German: Köln, IPA: [kœln]) is the ...

Mount Fuji (富士山, Fujisan; IPA: [ɸuʥisaɴ]) is the ...

Names in languages with no particular present-day or historical ties to the place in question (English excepted, of course) should not be listed as alternatives.

Avoid anachronism. An article about Junípero Serra should say he lived in Alta Mexico, not in California, because the latter entity did not yet exist in Serra's time. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, and Thabo Mbeki was the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. For clarity, consider also mentioning the current name of the area (for example, "in what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.