Style Book

This page is considered an official policy on the Lizzie McGuire Wiki.
It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow.

This Style Book is intended as a guide to ensure consistency across articles in the Lizzie McGuire Wiki (LMWiki). All articles on the wiki follow a specific and regimented format. Articles not matching this format should be revised in such a way that reflects the accepted standards laid out by our Style and Formatting Guidelines.

Style and Formatting helps LMWiki remain organized, clean, consistent, and easy to read. This article contains information on proper style and formatting at the site. For formatting of individual sections please see below.

Style

The LMWiki strives to document and organize all information in and about the world of Lizzie McGuire, as effectively as possible, in the form of a wiki. Anyone is welcome to contribute! An important part of creating such an exhaustive source of information is ensuring that the content is delivered in a pleasing, uniform way. In order to achieve this, the LMWiki community has worked to produce some standards on the format of wiki articles. These standards are not set in stone, but they are considered established policy that should not be readily dismissed or ignored. Suggestions for improving the standards should be discussed on the appropriate talk page.

This document describes articles as they should be formatted in the Source Editor. Editors are free to use the default Visual Editor (VE) to get a feel for the wiki's editorial processes, but are expected to switch to Source when they feel comfortable doing so, on account of VE's numerous functional limitations and bugs.

Point of view

Never write in a first-person point of view. For example: "I saw this episode on Disney, but I think it can be found on ABC." All pages must be written in a third-person view.

Neutral point of view

Always write in a neutral point of view. Don't use your own or anyone else's personal opinion, but rather the common opinion when writing on a page. Read more about "Neutral point of view" here.

Language, grammar, and other mistakes

It is very important to write in a way other people can understand. LMWiki is primarily in American English, but you do not need a strong command of the English language, in order to contribute; any information you add, can be "cleaned up" later by others (or by yourself!). If you have something vital to contribute, don't let language be the barrier.

Reliability and assumptions

It either is, or is not. All information added to the LMWiki must be valid. Content based on assumptions will be deleted, as this does not provide the reader with quality information.

Spelling and grammar

Punctuation

When quoting content in-line, periods and commas are placed inside of quotes, while colons and semicolons are kept outside. As for question marks and exclamation points: If the punctuation is part of the quote, it goes inside; otherwise, it's outside.

Gordo asked, "Lizzie went to the store?"
Did Gordo say, "Lizzie went to the store"?

If Gordo asked if Lizzie went to the store, question goes inside the quote. If you're asking if Gordo said that Lizzie went to the store, question goes outside the quote.

Do not use "curly quotes" (the open and close quotes that are used in professional publications), or "curly apostrophes." Wiki's search feature is not proficient in finding words that contain the curled apostrophe. If your text includes curled quotes and apostrophes, you might consider copying and pasting the text into a simple text editor, like Notepad, which can replace them with simple quotes and apostrophes.

Numbers

Whole numbers under twenty (20) and whole numbers evenly divisible by ten (10) should be spelled out. Other numbers should use digits.

Five
Thirteen
Forty
87
2.35

Writing style and perspective

Articles in the mainspace should be written as if they were about historical events, real-people, or places that actually exist. Strive to convey information without breaking the fourth wall experience.

All articles are written in third person, without exception.

Attribution

Do not sign edits with your name or date. Talk pages and forums require a signature and timestamp, but articles do not. The wiki software automatically records the author and date of each edit made, so there is no need for additional, in-line attribution. Most non-common sense material added to the wiki requires adequate sourcing; see the link above for more information.

LMWiki is an encyclopedia, not a publisher of original thought. The threshold for inclusion in LMWiki is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether it is true. LMWiki is not the repository for your opinion.

Although everything on LMWiki must be attributable, in practice not all material is attributed. Editors should provide attribution for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. The burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to add or retain the material. If an article topic has no reliable sources, LMWiki should not have an article on it.

Formatting

Emphasis

Bold – Bold text should only be used to emphasize the name of an article's subject, the first (and only the first time) it appears in the article.
Italics – Names of movies, television shows, books, video games, songs, and poems should be italicized. This should not be used to emphasize words in an article.
Capitalization – Do not use "all caps." Article titles should match standard American English in terms of capitalization, while words appearing in the article's body should only be capitalized if they are proper nouns.

Linking

Every significant term or person referenced in an article needs to be linked to a page on that subject. To do this, enclose the subject in square brackets. Medium to short pages should link to important topics only once, regardless of how many times they appear, or twice if the topic appears again in an infobox or sometimes in a list. Links should not be added to bolded names or nicknames in the article's lede.

Redlinks

When a link is added to a word or phrase without an article, a red link or redlink displays in place of the typical blue one. Clicking a red link opens an edit window, prompting for a new article to be created. Red links are not necessarily "mistakes" or "unhelpful." In fact, seeing a red link may cause someone to desire to contribute by adding information on that page; editors and readers with more ambition than the original linker may be able to concoct a full-fledged article from that link. Adding a red link also ensures that once a page with that title is created, that it does not become an orphan, a page that no other pages link to.

Never be intimidated by red links. They are part of the ordinary process of article evolution. Most articles start as red links, advance to stubs once an editor discovers it, and eventually, they become adult articles that offer rich content for readers.

Pass them by if little can be offered at the time of their discovery, click on them to add information, or remove them if they link to unlikely topics. Unlikely topics are those which LMWiki would not find necessary to cover. A link to Artichoke could be removed, since artichokes do not make any notable appearance in Lizzie McGuire. A link to a Matt's Schemes may prove useful once enough information has been gathered on them. Images too appear in this fashion. Before clicking on one to upload it, verify that the content is free to use or qualifies as fair use before doing so.

For a complete list of current redlinks, see Special:WantedPages.

Lists

Adding hashtags before items in a list numbers them (ordered list). This is equivalent to the <ol></ol> tag in HTML. A sub-item can be added with an additional hashtag. For example:

One
Two
Three
1. Three point one

Bullets can be used for the same purpose (unordered list). This is equivalent to the <ul></ul> tag in HTML:

One
Two
Three
- Three point five
  - Three point six

Most lists should use bullets, unless the order of the entries matters. If necessary, these two kinds of lists may be nested.

Step one
Step two (choose one)
- This option
- That option
Step three

Infoboxes

Infoboxes are templates designed to hold basic but essential information about a topic in a tidy box at the top-right side of an article. Most articles, including virtually all episodes and characters, should have an infobox of some sort.

Each parameter of an infobox is placed on a new line for readability. There should be one space both before and after the equal sign on each line. The closing braces should also be placed on a new line, after the final parameter, and the lede should appear immediately following the closing braces, on the same line.

Example of correct usage:

{{NewEpisode
|title = 
|image = 
|Episode Number = 
|Air Date = 
|Writer(s) = 
|Director = 
|Production Code = 
|Starring = 
|Recurring = 
|Guest(s) = 
|Previous = 
|Next = 
|Chronological Previous =
|Chronological Next = 
}}

Leads

A lead is the introductory paragraph of an article, and each article should contain one. The name of the article should be emboldened within the lead. The "lead" contains basic, general facts about the article's subject. It helps illustrate the topic in a broad manner and serves to offer the most rudimentary, yet fundamental information about it. Leads should not exceed one paragraph, although longer articles may require longer leads to help summarize their wide scope of coverage.

Do not be afraid to repeat information found elsewhere in the article. That is the intention of the lead: to take all aspects of the article and combine them into one, coherent and condensed unit of writing.

The lead does not have a header. In many articles, the lead (or parts of it) may incorrectly be placed under a "Description" header. This is incorrect, because the lead IS the description of the article.

Ideally, even unused/empty infobox parameters should be included. This does not affect the template output, but a readable, standardized form makes template functionality more apparent to editors and reduces the complexity of mass infobox maintenance by bots.

Episode Page Sections

Infobox

The NewEpisode infobox should be at the top of every episode page.

Lede

The lede (or lead, if you prefer) consists of one sentence in the format: EPISODETITLE is the ORDINALEPISODENUMBER episode of the ORDINALSEASONNUMBER season of Lizzie McGuire.

EPISODETITLE should be bold. "Lizzie McGuire" should be italicized.

As an example, here is the wiki code for the episode "Bad Girl McGuire":

'''Bad Girl McGuire''' is the eleventh episode of the [[Season 1|first season]] of ''[[Lizzie McGuire]]''.

Summary

The summary is a one sentence summary of the episode plot. If there is a Matt-oriented subplot, then a second sentence can be used, beginning with "Meanwhile, Matt".

Here is the current summary for the episode "Bad Girl McGuire":

Gordo and Miranda come to the rescue when Lizzie takes a turn to the dark side. Meanwhile, Matt celebrates having his bedtime revoked.

Synopsis

The synopsis is a detailed description of the plot of the episode. It may take many paragraphs to provide proper exposition of the episode's events. Resist the urge to include quotes in the synopsis. Try to limit your description to events, and if necessary, character motivations.

In the event of a Matt-oriented subplot, detail that in a "Meanwhile, with Matt" subsection, after the synopsis of the main plot.

Trivia

Acceptable trivia entries might include "behind-the-scenes" elements in the production of the episode. Many episodes include montages, and a brief description of the montage would be appropriate here.

Goofs

Appropriate goofs might consist of discontinuity, characters saying incorrect things, production errors (such as visible crew or equipment), or plot holes. These are not the only examples of goof categories, though.

Quotes

List humorous or insightfult quotes by characters. When quoting content, please record the literal content that appears in the episode, including all errors.

Pop Culture

List references (either visual or quotes) that are directed to television shows, films, songs, books, games, sporting or news events, characters or public figures of any kind.

External Links

Links outside of LMWiki that feature this episode.

References

Information pulled from anywhere outside of this episode must cite a source, even if it is just to another episode of Lizzie McGuire. Place a footnote inside the text, with a link to the source material in the reference section.

Naming and focus

Focus

Always maintain focus when writing an article. If an article is about a location, for example, give a brief description of what occurs there, or the location's history. Ask yourself whether the information you are adding is relevant to the topic of the article. If not, a link to the topic you want to add might be more appropriate. We want to maximize a reader's chances of finding the information they're looking for, on their first search attempt, without being redundant.

Creating an article

Articles can generally describe:

An episode
A character
A performer (actor/actress)
A location
A well-established concept (such as the relationship between two characters)

Anyone is welcome to update the wiki, but before creating a new article, double-check to ensure the article does not already exist. Use the search bar in the upper left-hand corner of the screen to search for the specific title of the desired article.

New articles can be started by clicking on red links.

For more advice on article creation, read this article on Wikipedia!

Unknown information

In some cases you won't have all the information at hand. If this is the case, please do not fill in information with guesses or approximations. Do not "make up" things to fill the space. Nothing is worse than inaccurate information!

Please omit sections if they are contentious, or unsourced and likely to remain unsourced. If contestable information might have a source out there, flag that sentence with

{{Cite}}

so readers and editors alike know not to take the claim at face value.