Authority must be obeyed, or it must be overthrown.
This is an official Alice Wiki policy. It has wide acceptance among editors and is a standard that everyone should follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy.
The Manual of Style serves as the official guide to editing Alice Wiki articles. Unless otherwise stated, the rules must be followed without exception.
Headings should use standard English "sentence" case instead of title case; that is, non-pronouns should not be capitalized unless they are the first word in the header.
Similar to an indentation in traditional English literature, headings serve as the dividers of an article. However, it should not be used exclusively as the beginning and ending points of a paragraph. Under most circumstances, one space between sections would suffice. Headings should be reserved for removing the marks of distinctly different sections, and each heading should be placed in order of prominence, meaning, heading 2 (a set of == at either end of the title of the section) should come before a related heading 3 (===), and so on.
Headings for characters and inanimated objects/locations vary - when describing the past of an object or location, please use the heading "History". When discussing a character or enemy, please use the heading "Biography". Please use separate descriptions (Section 3's) for different time periods and events, such as:
The first mention of the article name in the introductory paragraph should be bolded (wiki markup: ''' or Bold text button).
Titles should follow typical English title conventions, for example, titles should have every word capitalized unless it is one of the prepositions such as "and," "of" and et cetera.
Literature, video game, and film titles should be italicized (wiki markup: '' or Italic text button). Songs should be enclosed in quotation marks ("").
Works of art under Alice: Otherlands (e.g. posters of several landscapes of the famous minds) should be enclosed in quotation marks as these are part of a larger work.
Titles for character pages should not include honorary titles unless that is the stated name of the character, such as the Queen of Hearts, or there is nothing distinguishing about that character, such as Mrs. Liddell.
"The" should typically be avoided in any title and it should be written in the singular form rather than the plural. Exceptions would be made if the article is about a group with a plural name.
Use parentheses to distinguish similarly named articles.
References[]
Reference tags should be placed after a punctuation if they coincide with it.
Exceptions would apply for en dashes (–) and if the reference would only apply within a parenthetical phrase.
There should be no space between the tag and the punctuation or the tag and parenthetical phrase.
Multiple reference tags should not have a space between them.
Vocabulary[]
Language[]
Formal use of language must be observed on all canon articles.
Contractions must be avoided as these are too informal.
Perspective[]
In-universe articles should be written as if Wonderland and Alice's reality were the real world. These include characters, locations, items, weapons, and other in-universe articles not in the real world category.
Real world articles are written from "our" perspective. These include walkthroughs, personnel, music, and other real world articles.
Avoid the usage of "I," "you," and "me"; instead, use "the player" or alternative words.
Spelling[]
American spelling is generally preferred on the canon articles, on any template transcribed on articles, and on all official announcements to reflect on the Alice-series' American origins.
Regional variations in spelling may be used in all other contexts on Alice Wiki, such as talk pages, userpages, and blog posts.
If quoting a source, never alter any part of the quotation, even if it does not use American spelling or has been misspelled.
Tenses[]
For in-universe articles:
Past tense must be used on any event articles, articles describing entities that are deceased or no longer exist, or sections of any in-universe article detailing past events.
Present tense must be used on any item, weapon, location, enemy, and character article, where this does not conflict with the above guideline on past tense.
Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, or between an image and an infobox.
Lead images, which usually appear inside an infobox, and the thumbnails shown in the article should usually be no wider than 250px.
Images that are not part of an infobox should have a caption (use the "thumb" function in the image tag) and should be 250px. If an image is a portrait style, it can be lower than 250px.
On the file page itself, use {{Imagebox}} properly filled out.
Videos[]
HD YouTube walkthrough videos with no commentary are preferred.
All Alice music videos used in the music articles are linked in the infobox due to aesthetic and formatting reasons.
On the file page itself, use {{Videobox}} properly filled out.
Due to copyright reasons, videos in YouTube might be taken down and become unavailable in the wiki, if found in a page please report it on Board:Peak Temple for immediate deletion or replacement by an admin.
Links[]
Avoid including multiple links for the same articles on the same page. Linking to one page several times is known as "overlinkage," and it can create walls of link-text, in addition to simply looking gaudy. For example, if "Mad Hatter" was already linked in a page, please refrain from linking it again to the same page later in the article.
First mentions of characters, locations, and enemies are linked once in the infoboxes. {{AMA|l}} is used for information present only in American McGee's Alice and {{AMR|l}} for Alice: Madness Returns. Succeeding mentions of either Alice-series would require an unlinked text or {{AMA}} and {{AMR}}.
Headings are not linked in mainspace articles. They are however, permitted in blogs or userpages.
Image and video captions are not linked.
Do not use external links in the body of an article. Articles can include an external links section at the end, pointing to further information outside Alice Wiki as opposed to citing sources.
Miscellaneous[]
Source mode editing markup[]
Place spaces on either side of the text in a heading e.g. == Heading ==.
Place a blank line before a line containing a heading, except when a sub-heading immediately follows a heading, where there should be no blank line between the heading and the sub-heading.
Do not place a blank line between a heading and the text or files below it.
If used, {{Main}} should be added immediately under the heading. If it is followed by a file, the file link should be immediately under it before a blank line separating the file link and the beginning of the text.
File link parameters should appear in this order: [[File:Filename.png|thumb|right|250px|Description.]]
Place blank lines before and after a file, separating it from body text.
Place a space after the asterisk and hash symbols in unordered and ordered lists respectively, so that each new list item is easier to find e.g. * Item.
Sparingly, longer quotes of short passages of dialogue may be emphasized by using {{Blockquote}}. The quoted text should be in italics and be enclosed with quotation marks e.g. {{Blockquote|<Quote>|<Who said it to [[Whom]]>}}
Referencing is done by <ref name=acronym>{{citation template}}</ref> for the first usage of the specific reference and <ref name=acronym/> for succeeding usage of the reference with the same acronym.
Reference lists longer than eight references should be split into two. If there are more than fifteen, enclose the split reference list in a scroll box.
To promote consistency and ease of editing, the following items, if appropriate, should appear in this order before the lead section of an article.
{{Icons}}, which should appear together on one line rather than split apart.
Information about other uses, similar topics and links to disambiguation pages.
Notices detailing article quality and areas of improvement – if more than one is used, they should appear together on the same line, and should not be separated by spaces. If more than two are used, enclose them with {{Notices}}.
Infobox template, if a relevant one exists, split apart with a line for each template parameter. The closing curly bracket for the infobox template should be on a new line. The lead section should begin directly after this curly bracket, not on a new line.
{{Quote}} template containing a relevant quotation, in the color most closely associated with the subject of the article. The quoted text itself should not contain links. (See below for more information.)
Other notes[]
Quotes may be added to any page. Quote boxes should only be used once at the top of the page.
Speculation should not be added to any Alice Wiki article.