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Wikiversity:Manual of Style

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The Manual of Style is a set of guidelines for the formatting of articles on Wikiversity, currently based loosely on Wikipedia's manual of style.

Article names

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  • Article names should (generally) be in sentence case (e.g., Social psychology), although proper names may also be used e.g., John Dewey. Full capitalisation is appropriate e.g., for acronyms e.g., SPSS.
  • Article names should not contain special characters like &, |, -, and + unless necessary (there are exceptions, such as the C++ programming language, or when using / to make subpages).
  • Spaces should be used appropriately, and will be automatically converted to underscores in URLs. For example, Main Page and not MainPage or mainPage
  • Individual Schools may come up with their own guidelines on article names.
  • Where appropriate, the article name may be bolded if it occurs within the first paragraph.
  • For more information, see Wikiversity:Naming conventions

Headings

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Liberal use of headings is encouraged. Semicolons can be used but, as they cannot be linked to as sections of an article appropriately, using the equal sign method is preferred. Articles should, where at all possible, be split into subsections of reasonable length, separated by headings surrounded by two equals signs.

Syntax

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Following is an example of the Mediawiki syntax for headings:

Introductory paragraph.

== Heading ==
Text.
== Heading ==
Text.

Subsections can be created by using three or four equals signs, with four being parsed as a lower heading level than three. For example

Introductory paragraph.

== Heading ==
Text.

=== Subheading ===
Text.

=== Subheading ===
Text.

==== Deeper subheading ====
Text.

== Heading ==
Text.

Conventions

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  • It is suggested that headings not contain special characters: when a heading is linked to, special characters are converted to a format suitable for URLs, which can confuse visitors.
  • Avoid using Heading Level 1, for example = Section name =, as this causes problems with site navigation and usability. There are very few instances where this is appropriate. If you would like to change the format of the text such as the font size there are other tools to accomplish this.
  • Keep headings short: one or two words is often enough.
  • Do not repeat titles or significant parts thereof (exceptions include numbering, e.g. appending integers or roman numerals to headings).
  • See meta:Help:Section for more information.