विकिपिडिया:स्टाइलया म्यानुअल - Wikipedia

• When used as titles (that is, followed by a name), items such as president, king and emperor start with a capital letter: President Clinton, not president Clinton. The formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun: Hirohito was Emperor of Japan and Louis XVI was King of France (where King of France is a title). Royal styles are capitalized: Her Majesty and His Highness; exceptions may apply for particular offices.
• When used generically, such items are in lower case: De Gaulle was a French president and Louis XVI was a French king. Similarly, Three prime ministers attended the conference, but, The British Prime Minister is Gordon Brown.
• For the use of titles and honorifics in biographical articles, see Honorific prefixes.

• 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 Shī‘a, not The Shī‘a). (But see also the style guide and naming convention for the Latter Day Saint movement.)
• Scriptures are capitalized (Qurʾan, the Granth Sahib, the Bible). When the is used, it is not capitalized or italicized. Adjectives from the names of scriptures may or may not be capitalized (biblical, but Koranic); for others, check a dictionary appropriate to the style of the article.
• Honorifics for deities, when used alone in reference to a specific figure of veneration, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit); the is not capitalized. The same is true when referring to major religious figures and figures from mythology by titles or terms of respect (the Prophet, the Messiah, the Virgin, a Muse). When used generically, descriptively or metaphorically, such descriptive terms are not capitalized; thus the Romans worshipped many gods, many Anglo-Saxons worshipped the god Wotan, Jesus and Muhammad are both considered prophets in Islam, biblical scholars dispute whether Mary was a virgin for her entire life, and her husband was her muse.
• Pronouns and possessives referring to figures of veneration are not capitalized in Wikipedia articles, even when they traditionally are in a religion's scriptures. They are left capitalized when directly quoting scriptures or any other texts that capitalize them.
• Broad categories of mythical or legendary creatures do not start with capital letters (elf, fairy, nymph, unicorn, angel), although in derived works of fantasy, such as the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien and realtime strategy video games, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings are regarded as cultures or races in their fictional universes. Names or titles of individual creatures are capitalized (the Minotaur, the Pegasus) as are those of groups whose name and membership are fixed (the Cherubim, the Magi or the Three Wise Men). As with terms for deities, generalized references are not capitalized (cherub-like, the priests of this sect were called magi by some, several wise men were consulted).
• Spiritual or religious events are likewise capitalized only when they are terms referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood, the Exodus, but annual flooding or an exodus of refugees).
• Philosophies, theories and doctrines do not begin with a capital letter unless the name derives from a proper noun (capitalism versus Marxism) or has become a proper noun (lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to one of several specific political parties or ideologies, such as the US Republican Party or Irish Republicanism). Physical and natural laws and parodies of them are capitalized (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Theory of Special Relativity, Murphy's Law; but an expert on gravity and relativity, thermodynamic properties, Murphy's famous mock-law). Doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as distinguished from specific events) that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith are given in lower case in Wikipedia, such as virgin birth, original sin or transubstantiation.
• Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized (Good, Truth), but only within the context of philosophical doctrine; used more broadly, they are lower-case (Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice). Personifications represented in art, such as a statue of the figure Justice, are capitalized.

• Months, days and holidays start with a capital letter: June, Monday, the Fourth of July (when referring to the U.S. Independence Day, otherwise July 4 or 4 July).
• Seasons, in almost all instances, are lowercase: This summer was very hot; The winter solstice occurs about December 22; I've got spring fever. When personified, season names may function as proper nouns, and they should then be capitalized: I think Spring is showing her colors; Old Man Winter.

Scientific names for genera and species are italicized, with a capital initial letter for the genus but no capital for the species; for more specific guidelines for article titles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles. For example, the tulip tree is Liriodendron tulipifera, and humans are Homo sapiens. Taxonomic groups higher than genus are given with an initial capital and are not in italics; for example, gulls are in the family Laridae, and we are in the family Hominidae.

Common (vernacular) names of flora and fauna should be written in lower case—for example, oak or lion. There are a limited number of exceptions to this:

1. Where the name is the first word of the sentence, it should be capitalized as any other word would be. For example, Black bears eat white suckers and blueberries.
2. Where the common name contains a proper noun, such as the name of a person or place, that proper noun should be capitalized; for example, The Bengal tiger has a range of over 500 kilometers, or "The Roosevelt elk is a subspecies of Cervus canadensis."
3. For specific groups of organisms, there are specific rules of capitalization based on current and historic usage among those who study the organisms. These should ordinarily be followed:
4. In a very few cases, a set of officially established common names are recognised only within a country or a geographic region. Those common names may be capitalized according to local custom but it should be understood that not all editors will have access to the references needed to support these names; in such cases, using the general recommendation is also acceptable.

In any case, a redirect from an alternative capitalization should be created where it is used in an article title.

• Sun, earth and moon are not capitalized generally (The sun was peeking over the mountain top). They may be proper nouns in an astronomical context but only when referring to specific celestial bodies (our Sun, Earth and Moon): so The Moon orbits the Earth, but Pluto's moon Charon.
• Other planets and stars are proper nouns and start with a capital letter: The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux. Where a name has multiple words, it is treated like other proper nouns where each leading letter is capitalized: Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri.

• Directions such as north are not proper nouns and are therefore lowercase. The same is true for their related forms: someone might call a road that leads north a northern road, compared with the Great North Road. Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated (northeast and north-east, Southeast Asia and South-East Asia), depending on the general style adopted in the article.
• Regions that are proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as Southern California, start with a capital letter. Follow the same convention for related forms: a person from the Southern United States is a Southerner. Regions of uncertain proper-noun status are assumed not to have attained it.

• Proper names of institutions (for example, the University of Sydney, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College) are proper nouns and require capitalization. Where a title starts with the, it typically starts with lowercase t when the title occurs in the middle of a sentence: a degree from the University of Sydney.
• Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) require no capitalization:

Incorrect	(generic):	The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct	(generic):	The university offers …
Correct	(title):	The University of Ottawa offers …

See also Quotations above.

Double or single

Quotations are enclosed within "double quotes". Quotations within quotations are enclosed within 'single quotes'.

Inside or outside

Punctuation marks are placed inside the quote marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation (this system is referred to as logical quotation).

Correct:	Arthur said that the situation is "deplorable".
	(When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period is outside.)
Correct:	Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable."
	(The period is part of the quoted text.)
Correct:	Martha asked, "Are you coming?"
	(When quoting a question, the question mark belongs inside because the quoted text itself was a question.)
Correct:	Did Martha say, "Come with me"?
	(The very quote is being questioned, so here, the question mark is correctly outside; the period in the original quote is omitted.)

Article openings

When the title of an article appearing in the lead paragraph requires quotation marks (for example, the title of a song or poem), the quotation marks should not be in boldface, as they are not part of the title:

Correct:

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.

Block quotes

As already noted above, we use quotation marks or block quotes (not both) to distinguish quotations from other text. Multiparagraph quotations are always block-quoted.

Straight or curly?

• There are two options when considering the look of the quotation marks (that is, the glyph):

(Emphasis added to better distinguish between the glyphs.)

• The exclusive use of straight quotes is recommended. The curly variants are harder to edit, since the characters are not on the keyboard. They also interfere with searching (a search for McDonald's will fail to find McDonald’s and vice versa). And they are not well supported by older browsers, in which they may display as some other character entirely. Some editors regard curly quotes as an archaism or something better suited to paper media.
• Represent special foreign characters such as Arabic ayin (ʿ) and alif (ʾ) by using their correct Unicode symbols (despite the difficulties some browsers may have displaying such symbols); if this is not feasible, use a straight apostrophe instead, not a curly one.
• Grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) are neither quotation marks nor apostrophes, and should not be used in their place.
• Whenever quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, make a redirect from the same title but using the alternative glyphs.

Other matters

• An entire quotation is not italicized solely because it is a quotation.
• The sentence-initial letter of a quotation may be lower-cased if the quotation starts in the middle of a sentence and the quoted material is a natural part of that sentence. Where this occurs, it is unnecessary to indicate this change with square brackets. (For example, "It turned out to be true that 'a penny saved is a penny earned.' ")
• If a word or phrase appears in an article in single quotes, such as 'abcd', Wikipedia's search facility will find that word or phrase only if the search string is also within single quotes. This difficulty does not arise for double quotes.

A bracketed phrase is enclosed by the punctuation of a sentence (as shown here). However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, their punctuation comes inside the brackets (see further details below). These rules apply to both round "( )" brackets, often called parentheses, and square "[ ]" brackets. There should not be a space next to a bracket on its inner side. An opening bracket should be preceded with a space, except in unusual cases; for example, when it is preceded by:

• An opening quotation mark

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].

There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where another punctuation mark (other than an apostrophe or a hyphen) follows, and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.

If sets of brackets must be nested, use the contrasting type (normally, square brackets appear within round brackets [like this]). Often, it is better to revise the sentence to reduce clutter, using commas, semicolons, colons or dashes instead.

Avoid adjacent sets of brackets—either put the parenthetic phrases in one set separated by commas, or rewrite the sentence. For example:

Incorrect:	Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885–1919) (also known as Matviy Hryhoriyiv) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
Correct:	Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885–1919), also known as Matviy Hryhoriyiv, was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
Correct:	Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885–1919) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader. He was also known as Matviy Hryhoriyiv.

Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions of text. 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 (if a source says, "X contains Y, and under certain circumstances, X may contain Z as well", it is acceptable to reduce this to "X contains Y [and sometimes] Z", without ellipsis; when an ellipsis (...) is used to indicate material removed from a direct quotation, it should not be bracketed).
• To make the grammar work ("She said that '[she] would not allow this' "—where her original statement was "I would not allow this"). (Generally, though it is better to begin the quotation after the problematic word: "She said that she 'would not allow this.' ")

The use of square-bracketed wording should never alter the intended meaning of a quotation.

The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction in a list of three or more items. The phrase ham, chips, and eggs is written with a serial comma, but ham, chips and eggs is not. Sometimes omitting the comma can lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in this example: The author would like to thank her parents, Sinéad O'Connor and President Bush. Sometimes including the comma can also lead to an ambiguous sentence, as in: The author would like to thank her mother, Sinéad O'Connor, and President Bush which may be a list of either two or three people. In such cases, there are three options for avoiding ambiguity:

• A choice can be made whether to use or omit the comma after the penultimate item in such a way as to avoid ambiguity.
• The sentence can be recast to avoid listing the items in an ambiguous manner.
• The items in the list can be presented using a formatted list.

If the presence or absence of the final serial comma has no bearing on whether the sentence is ambiguous (as in most cases), there is no Wikipedia consensus on whether it should be used.

Some style authorities (mostly non-journalistic style guides) support a mandatory final serial comma. These include Fowler's Modern English Usage (UK), the Chicago Manual of Style (US), and Strunk and White's Elements of Style (US). Others (mostly newspapers and magazines) recommend avoiding it where possible; these include The Times (UK), The New York Times (US) and The Economist (UK). See serial comma for further authorities and discussion.

Proponents of the serial comma, such as The Elements of Style, cite its disambiguating function and consistency as reasons for its use. Opponents consider it extraneous in situations where it does not explicitly resolve ambiguity.

The names of corporate entities do not usually use the serial comma (for example, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad).

Colons (:) should not have spaces before them:

Correct:	He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943
Incorrect:	He attempted it in two years : 1941 and 1943

Colons should have complete sentences before them:

Correct:	He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943
Incorrect:	The years he attempted it included: 1941 and 1943

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

1. To distinguish between homographs (re-dress = dress again, but redress = remedy or set right).
2. To link certain prefixes with their main word (non-linear, sub-section, super-achiever):
   • However, a clear tendency is emerging to join both elements in all varieties of English (subsection is now standard), particularly in North America (where nonlinear is also standard).
   • The hyphen is more likely to be used when the letters brought into contact are vowels, especially the same vowel (co-opt, pre-existing), or where a word is unusual or less expected in the context (co-proposed, re-target).

   • It is somewhat common not to hyphenate well-known and recognizable cases (coopt, preexisting, but not coowned, and probably not reanchor).

   • The hyphen is very often used to avoid doubling a or i: intra-atomic, juxta-articular, semi-intensive.
   • The hyphen is sometimes retained after sub- to avoid bringing two consonants into contact, and especially to avoid doubling b (subabdominal, but sub-basement). It is often retained for clarity when the main word begins with a vowel, or is short—especially when both of these apply (sub-era, not subera).
   • The hyphen is still often used after non-, and especially when n would be doubled (non-linear or nonlinear, as above; non-negotiable).
3. To link related terms in compound adjectives and adverbs:
   • Sometimes the hyphen helps with ease of reading (face-to-face discussion, hard-boiled egg); hyphens are particularly useful in long nominal groups where non-experts are part of the readership, such as in Wikipedia's scientific articles: gas-phase reaction dynamics.
   • Sometimes the hyphen helps with disambiguation (little-used car, not a reference to the size of a used car).
   • Many compound adjectives that are hyphenated when used attributively (before the noun they qualify—a light-blue handbag), are not hyphenated when used predicatively (after the noun—the handbag was light blue). Where there would be a loss of clarity, the hyphen may also be used in the predicative case (hand-fed turkeys, the turkeys were hand-fed).
   • Hyphens are often not used after -ly adverbs (wholly owned subsidiary), unless part of larger compounds (a slowly-but-surely strategy).
   • 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, since 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).
   • A hanging hyphen is used when two compound adjectives are separated (two- and three-digit numbers, a ten-car or -truck convoy).
   • Values and units used as compound adjectives are hyphenated only where the unit is fully spelled out. Where hyphens are not used, values and units are always separated by a non-breaking space ( ).

Incorrect:	9-mm gap
Correct:	9 mm gap (rendered as 9 mm gap)
Incorrect:	9 millimetre gap
Correct:	9-millimetre gap
Correct:	12-hour shift
Correct:	12 h shift

Hyphens are never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging or when used to display parts of words independently, such as the prefix sub- and the suffix -less.

Hyphens are used only to mark conjunctions; not to mark disjunction (for which en dashes are correct: see below).

Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; but the rules and examples presented above illustrate the sorts of broad principles that inform current usage.

Several kinds of dash are used on Wikipedia.

There are no guidelines on whether to use one space after the end of a sentence, or two (French spacing), but the issue is not important, because the difference is only visible in the monospace edit boxes; it is ignored by browsers when displaying the article.

In general, formal writing is preferred; therefore, the use of contractions, such as don't, can't and won't, is avoided unless they occur in a quotation.

Avoid joining two words by a slash, as it suggests that the two are related, but does not specify how. It is often also unclear how the construct would be read aloud. Consider replacing a slash with an explanation, or adding one in a footnote. Where possible, spell things out to avoid uncertainties.

An example: The parent/instructor must be present at all times. Must both be present? (Then write the parent and the instructor.) Must at least one be present? (Then write the parent or the instructor.) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: the parent–instructor.)

In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash is usually preferable to the slash, e.g., the novel–novella distinction.

A slash may be used:

• to separate run-in lines of poetry (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);
• to show pronunciations ("ribald is pronounced /ri-bəld/");
• to separate the numerator and denominator in a fraction (⁷⁄₈);
• to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years (see Years).

An ellipsis is a series of three dots (periods) indicating omitted text. Ellipses are useful for reducing the size of quotations so that only the relevant parts appear.

• The precomposed ellipsis character (…) may be used; it displays three dots (…).
• Ensure that the omission does not subvert the intended meaning of the quotation.
• A space is inserted either side of the ellipsis, except where the first portion of text itself ends with a period; in this case, four dots rather than three typically follow the last word, without an intervening space. To prevent an ellipsis from wrapping to the beginning of a line, non-breaking spaces are entered instead of normal spaces ( …).

Examples: "in the middle of a sentence where punctuation does not occur …" "after a comma, …" "a semicolon; …" "a colon: …" "or at the end of a sentence …." "Rarely, in a question …?" "Even more rarely, before an exclamation mark…!"

Where ellipses are used to indicate material elided from a direct quotation, they should not be square-bracketed.

• Question and exclamation marks are never preceded by a space.
• The exclamation mark is used with restraint: it is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally unsuited to a scholarly or encyclopedic register.
• Clusters of question marks, exclamation marks, or a combination of them (such as the interrobang) are highly informal and inappropriate in Wikipedia articles.
• For the use of these marks in association with quotation marks, see the relevant section above.