Standardization Updates: Formatting

Wiki Discussion
1

Hey everyone, we’ve been hard at work on revamping and adding new articles, and it’s come to our attention that standardization updates in the Manual of Style are needed for both undertale.wiki and deltarune.wiki. Some of this was also suggested by EvieMaybe, thank you!

Some of them are minor, and others involve articles having slight name changes for consistency. To help with voting, please reply here with your choice and the reasons why you think certain options are better!

  1. Singular or Plural for article names

    On deltarune.wiki, we currently have a lot of plural names. But this has caused some issue when linking to the articles. Examples of this is Darkners. We’re currently considering changing it to singular.

    In terms of editing, Singular would help linking to articles a lot easier. “Darkner” is currently a redirect, but we’re usually writing “Darkner” for many characters!

    Negatives of singular: The old article becomes a redirect.

  2. Location, character, and route names:

    You’ve probably seen “bunker” get used a lot to describe the Hometown location, but it turns out Kocka had properly named the area as a “shelter” back in November 2018 back in the fandom site days. It apparently got renamed back to “bunker” sometime after. Character names like “Mayor Holiday” and “Striped Bird” are also leftovers from November 2018 as well. And the history for “Snowgrave Route” is also a similar issue as the shelter: Gil had properly named it as “Weird Route” in September 2021.

    We’re looking to stick to canon, code, or filenames, if possible. For the latter, a citation would help a lot so we don’t get the above misnames!

    We’ll need to specify exceptions and why, such as for Sound of Justice, who was only named as ??? in-game.

  3. Changing “Additional Uses” to “Usage” for item articles, add “Acquisition”
    It’s currently “Additional Uses.” Meanwhile, “Usage” is all-rounded, and more info can be added easily. Usage was suggested by SnorlaxMonster, and Acquisition was suggested by F-sharp.

  4. Title Case or Sentence case for headers

    As cased: ”Title Casing” or “Sentence case.” We’re considering the latter. It looks better and is easier to do.

    The downside: this will mess up current links, and have it link back to the start of the current article only. Will take time to fix, but we also have people interested in doing this.

  5. General noun casing

    This is similar to the above casing: we’ve had issues with consistency. Something like Dreemurr Residence should be cased as “Dreemurr residence” in main articles. Same for the Voice article, who should be as “voice,” as this is not the character’s name.

    It’s good for consistency and less people would be confused.

  6. Typesetter quotation vs logical quotation
    We’re currently using quotes similar to how Toby writes in the games, which is (mostly) typesetters, and looks like:

    Undyne Chapter 1

    Logical quotation has the punctuation outside of the quotation, which would be “like this”, and Wikipedia happens to do this to preserve the quotes. Since Toby does typesetters quotes, this is a manual fix.

  7. Oxford commas in 3 or more lists
    Wikipedia also does this. Also, this was asked by tentechBiolognostic, thanks!

  8. Smartquotes or dumbquotes
    Suggested by both tentechBiolognostic and Cod10129! Smartquotes: “/” Dumbquotes: ‘‘

Edit: Well, he mostly uses it..
Edit 2: Fix for Usages!
Edit 3: clarified #2 a bit more!
Edit 4: for #2 again.Edit 5: Add Acquisition and smartquotes or dumbquotes!

2
  1. Singular. As stated, this makes wikilinks easier and is the convention on almost all wikis that I know of.
  2. Canon names or names given in files should be stuck with in my opinion. Following this logic, I think "Sound of Justice" should be changed to something along the lines of "Gerson statue" (following normal sentence case if possible, at least in the main body of text, since the wiki should steer clear from fabricating names).
  3. I agree for the reasons mentioned, and I also think "additional" is too subjective.
  4. I agree with sentence case for the same reasons that Evie proposed. I don't have much more to add, except that I would be willing to help with all of the links that will break as a result of these changes.
  5. I agree with using the proper casing for nouns for the same reasons as the above.
  6. I think logical quotation makes more sense in order to preserve the quotes, and is more intuitive among a good majority of American editors who don't know what typesetter's quotation even is. I was about to link to the exact same Wikipedia essay you put until I realized you were already a step ahead of me, so kudos.
  7. Oxford/serial commas are generally good practice for formal writing and I agree with standardizing it.
3
  1. I much prefer singular over plural for article titles. With how we’ve recently started following WP:NOPIPE for redirect links, having plural article titles forced us to use an equivalent singular redirect link for linking to the singular version. I would prefer it if the real article title was the singular version instead.
  2. This is a bit tricky. Since Toby often does not give proper names to locations or characters, there are very little truly “canon” names, meaning we have had to fill in the blanks ourselves. I prefer if we use whatever is in the game files as the name instead of some made-up name.
  3. I propose we introduce separate acquisition and usage sections for item pages that warrant such a thing. We have discussed this in the Discord server and have concluded that this was a viable course of action. “Additional Uses” implies a primary use, which is not for the wiki to decide.
  4. Similar to the reason I stated in point 2, the names we use for title case make it seem like they are proper names when they are not. Sentence case for article titles and headers would address this problem. We are not in a huge rush to fix all the links this would break, but I would be willing to help if necessary.
  5. See point 4. These points are one and the same.
  6. I’ve never liked the wide use of typesetter’s quotation. I think logical quotation would work better when preserving quoted text.
  7. The Oxford comma is better for most cases in which three or more items are listed in a sentence. It makes the list separation clearer, and any case that isn’t clear can be reworded.
4
  1. I can’t really tell if other wikis are consistent about this, either. Perhaps having the plurality of the names depend on the plurality of the subjects, as the wiki tends to do already, would be best, in my opinion.
  2. I don’t get what this is exactly proposing. I think we should be as accurate as possible with names, and filenames (Sound of Justice) should be considered better than nothing.
  3. I guess changing to “Usage” is fair enough. It’s just that we would probably have to list the more mundane uses there too, in that case.
  4. I feel that title case feels professional in some ways, but I don’t really have a particular stance on this.
  5. I feel enthusiastic about this change. Capitalizing things that aren’t proper nouns feels awkward to me, and can be difficult to be consistent on, so I’d rather not do it
  6. Yeah, go ahead with logical quotation, we’re on a wiki with a big focus on analyzing a text, so the original punctuation should be maintained.
  7. Sure, include the Oxford comma, Wikipedia is kind of the standard anyways.
5

Wikipedia generally uses singular form for article titles, which allows for more precise names. In my opinion, plurality of the subjects is arbitrary, and article titles should generally be named according to what would be most commonly linked, which is usually the singular form.

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  1. Singular seems more adapted in the context of a wiki than plural.
  2. Though I think canon in-game names should prime 99% of the time, I also think the fact that the “old man statue” in the code, a simply explicit descriptive denomination, is additionally designated as “sound of justice”, a totally deliberate and arbitrary denomination, makes the latter a stronger contestant for the title name of the wiki page over “???” and “old man statue”
  3. Would “Usage” simply replace “Additional Uses” as the name of the section, or could we consider making it a new kind of practical section that would gather together the content of the current “Additional Uses” sections and the effects of items (AT, DF, Magic, abilities)?
    Also, in their item’s revamp proposition, SnorlaxMonster had proposed the creation of an “Acquisition” section. As someone who almost exclusively edit items pages, I personally thought that was a great idea: it would be a tidy and efficient way of organizing the info!
  4. As mentioned by F-sharp, the title casing making common nouns appear as proper nouns is a thing that I think needs to change. The function of a wiki makes it that the name of an article is not an actual title but the pure terminological denomination of the treated subject of the page, and shouldn’t therefore be title cased (at least, that’s how I see it). Naturally, I will gladly lend a hand to fix the broken links if this change is operated.
  5. Same as above, title case bad :(
  6. I find logical quotation to make more sense and to be a tad more pleasant to read, so I’m in favor of abandoning typesetter’s quotation!
  7. I don’t mind the Oxford commas at all: at best they’ll prevent misinterpretation, at worst they’ll just make some phrasing unnecessarily heavier, which is overall worth following this model imo.
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  1. Singular or Plural for article names

singular, makes linking simpler

  1. Location, character, and route names

i think:

  • what the actual game calls them should be preferred to
  • what any other official stuff calls them should be preferred to
  • what the game files call them should be preferred to
  • just making something up

and maybe just exclude '??????' from 'what the game calls them' entirely..? its not really a name, its a placeholder for an unknown name. (also its pretty ambiguous and just kind of unwieldy lol)
but then we'd have to rename the current [[??????]] to something else, and change all the references to '??????' to the new name, so maybe not
(if we do go down that route though, maybe rename it 'dark cliffs' like obj_musicer_darkcliff..?)

also, we should probably have a proper 'conjectural name' template rather than copying the whole note whenever its relevant

  1. Changing “Additional Uses” to “Usage” for item articles

makes sense, i'd be fine with it

  1. Title Case or Sentence case for headers

sentence case, its less ambiguous. its also the way wikipedia does it

  1. General noun casing

ditto

  1. Typesetter quotation vs logical quotation

makes sense, i'd be fine with it

we should probably also have a written rule about whether to use smartquotes (“/”) or dumbquotes ("). fwiw wikipedia uses dumbquotes because theyre more easily accessible (case in point: i had to copypaste those smartquotes in)

  1. Oxford commas in 3 or more lists

i'd like oxford commas yeah

8

I’m not bothering to read the whole thing, all I have to say is that this guy should be made a mod

Upvote if you agree I guess

9
  1. Singular is definitely better for article titles. [[Darkners]] and [[Darkner]]s are the same amount of effort to type, and there's a clear winner between [[Darkners|Darkner]] and [[Darkner]].
  2. In-game names should be the standard, with filenames as a fallback for things left completely unnamed in-game (e.g., Tao) or "names" that aren't really names (e.g., "???" becomes "Sound of Justice". Similarly, ?????? needs a name.[1])
  3. "Usage" is a better name for this header, although it would need to go over all uses of the term. This means that articles big enough to have a Usage header would want to reorganize all information about using the item into that section.
  4. This is a good idea; headings that are only unofficial names (e.g., Dark Sanctuary#Shifting Octaves Room) shouldn't be Title Cased.
    Edit: I previously disagreed with changing "Main Story" to "Main story", but I've reconsidered (see my later post) and am retracting that statement. These should probably be sentence case to be consistent with the sentence case locations.
  5. This is very similar to point #4, and I approve--names the wiki made up shouldn't look like Title Cased Proper Nouns™.[2]
  6. Logical. I personally have a soft spot for typesetter's, but preserving the original ending punctuation is more important. Even now, there are some cases where the wiki uses typesetter's because the punctuation is absolutely necessary, such as this ref on the Ralsei article.
    • Like tentechBiolognostic said, I think we should also have a written rule about "dumbquotes" vs. “smartquotes” (AFAIK the current standard is dumbquotes, and I support that).
  7. Oxford commas make lists clearer with basically no downsides, approve.

Sidenote:

Link? They already are (on DRW).

  1. I personally like "Cliffs" or "Dark Cliffs" because of the track Cliffs and the object that plays it, obj_musicer_darkcliff, but that would need a separate vote. ↩︎

  2. "voice" is too generic of a name to be clearly referring to the character when it's used lowercase, though, especially when it isn't linked. We probably need a new name for it. ↩︎

10

Ah something changed while I was gone then

Nice

11

Thanks for bringing that up about me, DaPixl2000, and everyone else that agreed! Appreciate it. I’m just a mod for deltarune.wiki for now, but I guess we’ll see if I have to step in for undertale.wiki as well on that!

12

Anyways, thanks for replying, everyone! Appreciate it, and thanks for waiting. So far, pretty much everyone is in favor for all the new changes, which is great! The ones mostly unanimous are:

1, Singular
3, Yes to Usage, Acquisition pending,
5, Yes, noun casing consistency is good.
6, Logical quotation good.
7, Yes to oxford commas.

Gonna clarify some things for #1 and #2 in this post:

On #1, “Singular or Plural” to Volnar The Unforgiving:

A few days ago I’ve looked around for how common it was for singular-named articles on other wikis. On zeldawiki.wiki, they have “Hylians” as “Hylian”. Mariowiki has Toad (species) for multiple Toads. As a small example from Wikipedia: I’ve found out Wikipedia has “Ducks” as a redirect for “Duck”.

On #2, “Location, character, and route names” to Yup34, Volnar The Unforgiving and Yotti 47:

I’ve clarified #2 a bit more to factor code and filename better, sorry for any confusion!

F-sharp and I have reevaluated Sound of Justice's name and fixed it up so there’s now a code citation for the enemy:

F-sharp's added code citation
F-sharp's added code citation349×182 11.7 KB

So this instance it’s us finding and choosing which name is better-suited for the character. “Old Man statue” sounds good, but it’s also very generic. F-sharp has also brought up a specific point: a lot of locations happen to have custom names for rooms because… well, the devs don’t really put specific names for each room! Only some SAVE Points have names, or we find out from other context like dialogue.

This is basically like how tentechBiolognostic has suggested “Dark Cliffs” as a possible name for the six question mark location in Chapter 1, which I think could be a good name for it than “Castle Town Cliffs/Outskirts”!

Edit 8. Forgot a sentence, and minor, minor edit. Also clarifying is always good. Also tentechBiolognostic’s suggestion! And a quick fixed list of the agreed ones.

13

Gonna cover #3, “Usage” in this specific post:

F-sharp and Yotti 47 has suggested both "Acquisition" and "Usage". I forgot bring up “Acquisition”! What does everyone else think about it? We did talk about this before on Discord with EvieMaybe and SnorlaxMonster as well. Here’s mockup posts of how the format would look:

Flat Soda format with Acquisition+Usage by SnorlaxMonster:

Acquisition+ Usage by SnorlaxMonster
Acquisition+ Usage by SnorlaxMonster1156×525 56.8 KB

This format looks better with more info, like Dark Candy. This was formatted by F-sharp:

Dark Candy by F-sharp
Dark Candy by F-sharp1179×2556 150 KB

It swaps Additional Uses. I think people want to see the stats and effects up front, so that info is likely fine in the intro for item articles.

Edit 2: I forgot to ask!

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#4, Title Case or Sentence case for headers:

Thank you, Yup34, F-sharp, Yotti 47 for offering to help with header changes! If we go with this, it might be a good idea if we choose which articles to work on so we don’t accidentally bump into each other if we all go for this change.

We got some split opinions on this change though, based on
Volnar The Unforgiving and Cod10129's comments: should there be an exception to which should and shouldn't have Title Case? Like “Main Story”?

15

Both tentechBiolognostic and Cod10129 also bring up a good point, which is: smartquotes or dumbquotes.

It’s currently not in the Manual of Style! We should add this, and I certainly prefer dumbquotes by a large margin. I think it’s even one of those “unspoken” consistencies that we stick to, but it’s good to have it written down at least.

16

Adding acquisition would be fine, that could be very helpful for new players

17

“these”?

18

That’s smartquotes. We use dumbquotes when wiki editing: ‘‘

19

After looking at capitalization more, the sentence case headings have grown on me ("Main story", "Version history", "Creation and development"), so I retract my previous statement--I'm fine with changing those. But I also found an annoying edge case: "Normal Route"/"Weird Route" sections.

I think we can all agree that proper nouns in sentence-cased titles should be capitalized.[1] This is problematic for articles with both "Normal Route" and "Weird Route" sections (such as Thorn Ring and Cyber City), though, since "Weird Route" is proper, but "normal route" isn't. This is what it looks like with common nouns sentence cased:

410×561 14.4 KB

This looks really inconsistent. I think capitalizing "Normal Route" is the best option here, since sentence case "Weird route" looks really awkward when the section immediately uses "Weird Route" as a proper noun:

1080×415 69.9 KB

What does everyone think about this? "Normal route"/"Weird Route",[2] "Normal route"/"Weird route",[3] or "Normal Route"/"Weird Route"?[4]

Also, I forgot to say this earlier, but I'll help out with changing all the header links once we get to doing that.

  1. so this area of Noelle's House would be "Carol and Rudy's room" in sentence case ↩︎

  2. the "obvious" sentence casing of the current headers ↩︎

  3. sentence case "Weird route" for consistency ↩︎

  4. currently in use, all title case ↩︎

20

Yeah, let’s just treat Normal Route as a proper noun for headers, maybe we could say it’s technically an unofficial name