FamilySearch Wiki:Manual of Style

A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for design and writing of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication or organization. Web site style guides focus on a publication's visual and technical aspects, prose style, best usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and fairness. The consistent use of style guidelines provides uniformity in style and formatting of wiki articles, which makes the articles easier for readers to understand and use.

Name a new article
Before creating a new article, take the time to think of a name that clearly explains in a few words the content of the article. Remove any unnecessary words or punctuation. You may want to run it by experienced wiki contributors. A correctly formated name for a new article can be very helpful to users.

Place names
Unlike most genealogy software place name conventions, Include the word "county" in the title of an article about a particular county.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations, including US postal codes, should not be used in article titles or text because abbreviations can mean different things in different parts of the world. For example, the abbreviation CA could mean either California or Canada, depending on the reader's nationality.

For more information about naming conventions, see also Help:Naming conventions.

Underline
Because the use of underline frequently indicates text with a hyperlink that can be clicked to learn more, do not use underline as a way to emphasize text.

Geographical Names
A proposed style guideline Naming Conventions for Geographic Names is being discussed. Once a consensus is reached a guideline will be adopted.

Linking to other articles in FamilySearch wiki
interwiki

Links should not include full URL
For readability's sake, links should not include the full URL of the destination page. There may be extremely rare instances where displaying the full URL is desirable, but this should be the exception, not the norm, and should require a compelling reason.

Correct: FamilySearch

Incorrect: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

One reason some wiki users have cited for displaying the full URL is that it will make the article more helpful to users who print the article. However, modern Web browsers print the full URL of linked sites by default even if the full URL is not displayed on users' computer screens while viewing, so this is not really an issue.

Box layout: columns vs. portals
Authors desiring to display a wiki page's content in boxes should use tables within columns instead of using sub-pages within portals. To see the code that allows one to layout columns and tables, go to the Maryland page, click Edit, and switch to Wikitext view. To see an example of portal code, go to the India portal on Wikipedia and click Edit this page. For more about this topic, see The Un-Portal Page.