Stalburg Wiki:Manual of Style

Writing style

• Content of articles should be written in an neutral, technical, descriptive and precise language, similar to a style of writing found in historical documentation, scientific documentation, reports, educational books, technical documentations and manuals.
  • Informal language, especially a one where the editor loosely collects thoughts, should be avoided. It is not a fanfic, a poetry or a stream of loose thoughts, nor should it use a first person perspective, to use terms like "We don't know a lot about (...)", "We collect/visit/are told (...)", "Maybe it is (...)", etc.
  • Despite a technical manner, the articles should not be only limited to simple sentences, and if properly utilised and not overused, complex sentences are permitted and in many cases might be more desireable over simple sentences, where otherwise two separate simple sentences that have an continuity established between them might be easier to read and understand.
• Articles should not contain any speculations or theories, if a part of described content requires an interpretation to be performed to write an article about it (for example when a story line is pieced together from several disconnected documents), it should be clearly stated this is in fact an possible interpretation of connected facts and logic, using such terms as "It is possible, that (...)", "It is implied, that (...)", "It was established, that (...)", "It is unknown, if (...)", etc. Addition of a caption of sorts of "Unconfirmed" next to the content in question, does not justify existence of speculation in the article in the first place.
• Articles should be kept consistent with the usage of proper names, and if one item is known under several names, one primary name should be choosen for the article page to refer to that item, with an possibility of shortened name used interchangeably. For example, a location is known under several names of the "Pine Fell Pumping Station", "Pine Fell Water Plant" and "Hammer Valley Pumping Station", in the reoccuring mentions of the name within the article, it should be settled on the primary name, like "(the) Pine Fell Pumping Station" and the shortened name of "(the) pumping station", that are referred in the whole page; the wiki article should not interchangeably use all three main names throughout when referencing the item.
• Refrain from using shortened forms of modal verbs, for example: use "do not" instead of "don't, "cannot" instead of "can't", "it is" instead of "it's", etc.
• Articles describing game mechanics should use third person perspetive, describing a player and how they interact with various features, mechanics and game elements, and vice versa, on how these elements interact with a player.
  • Articles describing walkthroughs, or being any other sorts of a guide, should use second person perspective, dictating clear and simple instructions to the player. Tips sections can be made in both second or third person perspective, however a whole section should keep an consistency to only one perspective.

Preference standardisation for languages, unit systems and decimal notation

Given a wide reach of INFRA community, discrepencies between British English (BrE), American English (AmE) and non-native English speakers, and inconsistencies between wiki articles, occur.

To combat this and to prevent conflicts, the following rules should be followed:

• Vocabulary from both BrE and AmE can be freely interused within the same article, which applies especially to terminology from different dialects that describes the same thing, for example: "Lorry" (BrE) and "Truck" (AmE), "Postbox" (BrE) and "Mailbox" (AmE), "Flat" (BrE) and "Apartment" (AmE), etc.
  • In some cases interused terminology might be a desired stylistic approach to reduce repetition in the articles, giving them synonymous weight. However given a nature of more technical and formal style of writing the articles should follow, it should not be overused.
  • The official games may prioritise specific vocabulary, which should be the default choice before introducing synonymous terminology from BrE or AmE, for example the game uses word "Tenement" to describe a residential building, instead of "Block of flats" (BrE) or "Apartment Building" (AmE).
• A specific spelling of certain words that are shared between both BrE and AmE is acceptable to be used from both languages as long as the consistency of that specific spelling is kept within a whole page, for example: a page using "Behaviour" (BrE) or "Behavior" (AmE) should keep the same spelling throughout the whole article it is used, two different spellings should not be mixed together.
  • The official games may prioritise a specific way of spelling words, in that case if the written article is directly based on a source from the game, where that specific spelling is used, it must be prioritised, for instance: Turnip Hill - Status report uses "Behaviour" (BrE), while The acquisition of Bergmann Group uses "Defense" (AmE), should a wiki page be created directly based on the content of these, these specific ways of spellings would need to be prioritised and kept consistent within that page.
• If you really must be reviewing the whole page to correct every word entirely to either BrE or AmE, going beyond correcting common typos and mistakes, the British English should be prioritised (taking into the account the previously established points), otherwise the page should be left with a proper spelling/vocabulary they way it was already established before.
• When including various numbers, values, units, measurements and calculations in the article page, the International System of Units (SI) and SI-derivative systems are to be used, and only those.
• For decimal notation, the comma (,) is used as the definite decimal separator in all articles.
  • For long numbers, >9999, a delimiter (thousands separator) can be optionally used as a space between the groups, the choice of using delimiter should be kept consistently throughout the whole article. Numbers from range 1000-9999 do not need to use delimiter even if other numbers in that same article above this range use it.
• If the date is meant to be written in a compact format, it should use little-endian format (day, month, year), using either a period or a dash as a separator; the usage of separator should be consistent within an article. More desireable date representation is however to write the month as a word, in this case "<month(word)> <day(ordinal numeral)>, <year(number)>", "<month(word)> <day(number)>, <year(number)>" and "<day(ordinal numeral)> of <month(word)>, <year(number)>" are all accepted, however a one set format should be followed within the same page.
• Whenever writing time representation, a 24-hour clock should be used on the wiki in all cases, with hours, minutes and seconds separated from each other by a colon.

Keep in mind that the developers are not a native English speakers, and like the majority of people using English as their secondary language in the modern age of globalisation, they will use a variation of globalised English that borrows vocabulary, terminology, spelling and grammy from various English dialects and their own local languages. The setting of the games is also influnced by non-English speaking countries and their standards, making for instance a use of decimal separator and delimiter as seen above, different from the English speaking countries.