FamilySearch Wiki talk:Manual of Style

This is the place for discussing stylistic details that affect many pages on the wiki. It covers mostly content changes that affect collections of wiki pages, whereas stylistic issues regarding the user interface, or general look and feel of the site, can be found elsewhere.

This page covers two kinds of stylistic ideas:


 * 1) Ideas that have reached a consensus among the FamilySearch Wiki community and can thus be executed over many pages.
 * 2) Ideas that have been proposed and need further discussion and consensus before implementation. (These ideas cannot be implemented over many pages until they have achieved a consensus decision.)

If you have an idea to add to the Manual of Style (MOS), see Transforming a Style Idea to a Manual of Style Guideline, and then add your topic to Proposals being discussed section below.

Issues that have reached a consensus decision

 * Use "History" Heading Rather than "Local Histories" in Place Pages
 * Format for Citing and Linking to Works in FS Catalog, Worldcat (OCLC)

Proposals being discussed

 * 1) Table of Contents: To Hide or Display by Default
 * 2) FamilySearch Wiki:Separator for Items in See Also Section
 * 3) Buttons
 * 4) Access Codes (how to designate whether a linked site is free or fee-based)
 * 5) Breadcrumb Trails
 * 6) Changing the Font Size and Color of Heading 1
 * 7) Adding References or Links to Books for Sale
 * 8) FamilySearch Wiki Talk:Consensus
 * 9) FamilySearch Wiki Talk:Source Citation Formats
 * 10) Linking to works in the FamilySearch Catalog (FS Catalog) and Worldcat (OCLC)
 * 11) Naming Conventions for Geographic Names
 * 12) Disambiguation
 * 13) Interactive Maps and Lists of Sub-divisions
 * 14) Linking to Directory Sites Whose External Links to Paid Sites are Ambiguous
 * 15) "Names, Personal" versus "Names Personal"
 * 16) "Language and Languages" versus "Languages"
 * 17) Localities template to replace populated places section
 * 18) Infobox template
 * 19) Wpd (Wikipedia) template
 * 20) Linking
 * 21) Spelling in the English-language wiki
 * 22) Naming a project
 * 23) Web sites or websites

What to do with Help:Naming Conventions?
Help:Naming conventions was created before we had the Manual of Style. It was also created "back in the day" when we discussed stylistic items in User Group meeting (Community Meeting) to reach consensus. Since Help:Naming Conventions deals with style more than instructions, I'm thinking it should be added to the FamilySearch Wiki namespace. I also wonder which (if any) of the conventions on Help:Naming Conventions deserves to be added to the Manual of Style or this discussion page. Ritcheymt 04:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I support the proposal to move Help:Naming conventions to the FamilySearch Wiki namespace. --Steve 09:25, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I also support the move and have added a discussion item to the page itself and also the "Move" template on the page. --Fran 18:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Guidelines for large projects
It would be helpful to have some guidelines established for large projects, such as the pages created for US state or county pages. I'm thinking specifically of the England probate registers project that includes a page for each of the 40 counties. It's user-friendly to have the same "look and feel", including the heading and subheading styles. Anne 18:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

A Place to Start
I think it would be easiest to piggyback of what other wikis have done. People who begin contributing may already be used to these conventions. For example, the Wikipedia Manual of Style gives some great ideas on what our conventions should be. Perhaps we lift from there and then change things as it becomes necessary to do so. --Gregorybean 02:16, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Links
What ever happened to format for the displayed text for links? If I remember correctly, "Click here to . . ." was considered an incorrect way to format them. I believe Create an external link talks about this subject. Thomas_Lerman 12:25, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Integration and links to other subjects
I suggest that this page be linked to the general help and editing pages for the Wiki. I note that there is the navbox at the bottom of the page but I suggest that there be a link to an appropriate page at the top. Also I don't see that this page has ever been categorized.

James L. Tanner 13:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Referencing Guidelines
One of the major sections of all publishing manuals of style is how to reference specific types of information. This Manual of Style does not includie such guidance. Is this because of a conscious decision not to include these guidelines, or an unintentional oversight? Including this information standarizes the references, but more importantly, it gives greater assurance that the reference can be found, despite URL chages, and it gives credit to the creater of the information as well as the person or web site that is hosting the information.

Klk3 20:48, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Missing information in section 4.3
The following catagory has missing information:

Naming subheadings within articles

Organizing information. In an article, subheadings or sections should be used to organize the content and keep similar information together. Subheadings should help users scan an article to find the information they need.

Guidelines for subheadings/section titles. Use the guidelines for article titles with the following differences.

The following differences information (the sentence above in bold) is not listed in the article.

Also under the catagory: Linking through the use of page section templates, Other possible templates to create include:  there are two red templates -either broken links or no content in those links. Need to fix links or add content.

Thanks

Featured Article Committee members –


 * It appears that this section was started and not finished by Darris. Looking back in the page history I found that this section was added on 18 June 2011. I have added a ToDo template as a reminder that it is incomplete. --Steve 16:35, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

How to Describe an Area
I suppose you are going to discuss this, but just in case you don't, I'll bring it up. Please give some thought to how to describe an area. A perfect example might be Harmony, PA, which exists in documents, but not on the ground. I think Oakland is the closest town with a current name. Also areas were located in territories that are now states; counties are divided and the names are changed, etc. Do we give it the current name so that people can find it or give it the name and location so people can find it in documents?I suppose you are going to discuss this, but just in case you don't, I'll bring it up. Please give some thought to how to describe an area. A perfect example might be Harmony, PA, which exists in documents, but not on the ground. I think Oakland is the closest town with a current name. Also areas were located in territories that are now states; counties are divided and the names are changed, etc. Do we give it the current name so that people can find it or give it the name and location so people can find it in documents? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fillmore13  (talk | contribs)  02:55, 16 July 2014  (UTC)

Plural possession

When a word is showing possession and would normally have an apostrophe s ('s) at the end of the word, but that word is also plural or the word already ends in s, then the word would normally end in s'. There is no plural possessive that ends in s apostrophe s (s's). [Maybe this sentence should be first in the explanation. I do not have a Chicago Manual, but the MLA Handbook, Sixth Edition shows this under the area of Punctuation - Apostrophe. 3.2.7b. Feel free to reword the explanation.]

Correct: The ancestors' graves were not marked.

Incorrect: The ancestors's graves were not marked.

Thanks, Darlene (Password 18:46, 23 August 2014 (UTC))

Link to Church style guide
The link to the style guide needs to be https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/style-guide RaymondRS (talk) 10:58, 3 June 2021 (MDT)