Hello, could anyone help me write a Manual of Style for my wiki, the Professor Layton wikia?? I've got a lot of ideas, but am not sure how and where to start. Any tips, hints or tricks?? Thank you, MoltenAsh 18:04, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

First you should figure out what the most common types of articles would be, like characters, episodes, etc. Next you should probably have naming guidelines (don't use "the" or "a", things like that) for articles, section headers, and links. After that take each article type and decide what you want the layout for each to look like. Generally this means deciding what sections go where and in what order. For some general style issues you should think about whether you want to allow many wikilinks or just for the first occurrence of a word or phrase. Do you allow external links anywhere or just in a section identifying them? Where can images be displayed? Should thumbs be used most of the time or only with really big images? Where do article management tags go (usually boxes marking things out of date, missing citations, etc.)? Should stubs be at the top, in each empty section or at the bottom?

Most wikis direct users to use standard types of infoboxes in their manual of style. Some wikis make sure there is a boilerplate for most common article types. List cases where common templates should be used. When and how often should navboxes be used. A manual of style can be quite large.

Take a look at the manual of style at some the bigger Wikia for ideas:

• w:c:wow:WoWWiki:Manual of Style
• w:c:starwars:Wookieepedia:Manual of Style

Bleeding edge Wikia:

• w:c:reddead:Red Dead Wiki:Manual of Style

Like a Manual of Style, but not called that:

• w:c:lyrics:Help:Contents/Getting_Started/Creating A New Page

I hope that is a start. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:57 PM PST 24 Jun 2010