OrthodoxWiki:Style Manual

This page is an official policy on OrthodoxWiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. If you are part of the administration, please feel free to update this page as needed, but make sure that changes you make to this policy really do reflect OrthodoxWiki's perspective before you make them.

This is the official OrthodoxWiki Style Manual. Refer to it when writing new articles or editing existing ones. It is officially in in effect but still under development. Articles and links should conform to the following standards. The purpose of this Style Manual is to maintain consistency throughout OrthodoxWiki.

Please don't be intimidated by these guidelines. Your contributions are welcome even if they do not perfectly conform to what's below. These guidelines are meant to channel—not impede—your efforts! If what you contribute doesn't conform precisely to these guidelines, no doubt it will be honed by other members of the community. OrthodoxWiki is, after all, always a work in progress.

Introduction

This Style Manual constitutes the official style protocols for OrthodoxWiki. When editing articles or creating new ones, this document should be used as a reference point and guidelines for all content. It is strongly recommended that you add it to your watchlist so that you can track whenever it's updated and incorporate the changes into your editing, helping to keep the whole site in conformity.

The Style Manual is "enforced" primarily by the users of the site but also by the administrators. Enforcement comes in the form of composing articles according to the manual the first time they're created and also by continual editing to conform to the Style Manual. That means that we rely on you to help us keep things in order by using the Style Manual.

Note: All the following rules about articles and their names also apply to internal links, because clicking on an as-yet-to-be-written article linked in an existing article will give the new article that name by default. Thus, when making links to articles, those links must conform to the naming practices defined here.

Tone

Though there are certainly exceptions, the atmosphere being developed for most OrthodoxWiki articles is generally encyclopedic, i.e., the style of writing one would expect from an encyclopedia. That doesn't mean that articles have to conform to academic writing characteristic of secular scholarship, but it does mean that a certain level of professionalism and consistency is desired.

At the same time, our approach is hagiographical—that is, attempting to write with reverence and humility regarding the awesome subjects which we're addressing. As such, try to develop your writing here in that manner. We're trying accurately and humbly to convey the truth of the Orthodox Christian faith in an easy-to-use, thorough and readable resource, an accessible compendium of Orthodox Christianity. Always keep that in mind when contributing.

Importing Articles from Wikipedia

See: OrthodoxWiki:Style Manual (Importing)

Copyrighted Material

Copyrighted material may be incorporated into OrthodoxWiki only if you have the copyright holder's permission. Remember that just because you found something on the web doesn't mean that it isn't copyrighted. In fact, most things are copyrighted by default.

If the copyright holder is willing to release his material under one of the open licenses common to Wikis (such as the Gnu Free Documentation Licence or the Creative Commons License), then including it as a regular, editable article is no problem. If, however, the creator doesn't want his creation edited mercilessly (as is the norm for OrthodoxWiki), then a copyright note should be included at the bottom of the material, looking something like this:

Once you've done that, ask an administrator to protect it for you so that it can't be edited.

By default, all newly submitted content on OrthodoxWiki is released under a dual GNU Free Documentation license and Creative Commons License.

Image Permissions

Please be sure to use to appropriate template to credit images taken with permission from other websites. See Help:Image licenses for detals. Special notes apply to the following:

Help:Image_licenses#OCA.org - an important note on using images from OCA.org
Help:Image_licenses#Holy_Transfiguration_Monastery - using icons from Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boscobel, WI USA)

Types of Articles

What kind of articles is OrthodoxWiki looking for? Ostensibly, anything directly to do with the Orthodox Christian faith and life is appropriate. In addition, however, articles especially on historical subjects and persons related to Church life are also appropriate. So, while there are articles on saints and bishops, there are also articles on emperors and heretics. Therefore, while creating articles and making links within them, consider what might be generally appropriate for OrthodoxWiki.

For examples, browse around existing articles, click on the links already within them, and if you have information on subjects already being linked to, feel free to contribute to existing articles or create new ones. And, as always, don't worry about breaking OrthodoxWiki or messing things up, because your work will become part of the community effort and thereby be honed and improved, ever bringing us closer to achieving our goal of being a nearly endless compendium of information access and exchange regarding Orthodox Christianity.

Articles not appropriate for OrthodoxWiki

Obviously, anything which has no direct connection to the Orthodox faith is not appropriate. Further, some things which are characteristic of Wikipedia articles but don't make sense on OrthodoxWiki also should be left out, including the following: year articles (e.g., 1054), places whose significance goes far beyond its exclusively religious meaning (e.g., Constantinople), or major historical personages who had nothing directly to do with the Orthodox Church (e.g., Ronald Reagan). Certainly, all of these items may have something to do with the Orthodox Church, but their connections can be noted in articles about the events related in other articles which more directly bear on the Orthodox faith.

Controversial Subjects and Original Research

Articles on controversial topics are welcome on OrthodoxWiki as long as they cite reputable, third-party publications (e.g., historians, news articles, etc.). Original research and unsourced articles are generally permitted for non-controversial material.

Neutrality and the OrthodoxWiki Bias

See: OrthodoxWiki:Style Manual (Point of View)

Technical Terminology

A number of technical and theological terms in Orthodoxy differ according to the languages of the cultures in which they're used. Thus, the preference for OrthodoxWiki will be to use Greek terms where no standard English word is predominant among Anglophonic Orthodox writers. The main issue is with article names, so use epigonation instead of palitsa, or use exorasson instead of riassa or jibbee. Where appropriate, make note of other languages' terminology in the body of the article. The reason for preferring Greek terms is that Greek is the predominant "source language" for our Church's culture and terminology and is thus universal.

Western Rite articles will likewise probably prefer Latin, though given the longer history of the Western Rite in England, there is already a more developed native English vocabulary for Western Rite liturgical and theological terms.

Standard English Usage and Spelling

Use standard English spelling and usage for article names and in the bodies of articles. Thus, use icon instead of ikon. What constitutes standard spelling will vary according to what variety of English (e.g., British, American, Canadian, Australian, etc.) a contributor uses, but try to make articles consistent throughout (e.g., every instance of center in an article should be spelled either centre or center, not both).

English names

Use the form of the names of people and places most commonly used by English-speaking Orthodox Christians. So, instead of Vartholomaios I (Archontonis) of Constantinople, use Bartholomew I (Archontonis) of Constantinople. Some ambiguity will of course exist here, especially with names that are not commonly used in English-speaking countries. Biblical names should conform to the varieties most common in English-language Bibles; for instance, use Elijah instead of Elias and Joshua for the prophet instead of Jesus.

Some places will be exceptional, such as Hagia Sophia, which is the most common way of referring to that ancient church, rather than St. Sophia or Holy Wisdom. Thus, the rule is to use the form most commonly used in English, not necessarily an Anglicized or translated form.

Church Calendar

See: OrthodoxWiki:Style Manual (Church Calendar)

Churches

See: OrthodoxWiki:Style Manual (Churches)

Monasteries, Parishes, and Theological Schools

Because there are so many communities with the same names, articles about monasteries, parishes, and theological schools should be named in the following fashion: Name of Community (Location). For example, St. Tikhon's Orthodox Monastery (South Canaan, Pennsylvania), Hagia Sophia (Constantinople), Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology (Brookline, Massachusetts), or St. Paul's Monastery (Athos). In article titles for places, use St. (i.e., a capital S, followed by a lower-case t, followed by a period) rather than Saint, St, or S.. For plurals, use Ss. (i.e., a capital S, followed by a lower-case s, followed by a period).

Books of the Bible

Articles and links to books of the Bible should conform to the links in the canonical lists found at Holy Scripture—note that the names shown there do not always match the links to which they lead! For instance, you might see Nehemiah, which takes you to Book of Nehemiah, not to Nehemiah (which is an article about the prophet by that name).

Articles about Biblical books should be included in Category:Scripture and Category:Texts.

People

See: OrthodoxWiki:Style Manual (People)

List articles

With the exception of Links articles, articles that consist of a list of something (e.g., List of Patriarchs, List of autocephalous and autonomous Churches) should be named List of [subject].

Western Rite

For most topics regarding the Western Rite where there are also Byzantine Rite equivalents, add a section to the single article for the Western Rite distinctives. For instance, instead of having a separate article on Western Rite vestments, to vestments one would add a section titled "Western Rite" or the like.

For topics extensive enough to require a separate article for the Western Rite which might otherwise have the same name as a Byzantine Rite article, put "Western Rite" in parentheses, e.g., Vespers (Western Rite).

Language Mechanics

The following refer to the various mechanics of writing for OrthodoxWiki articles.

Capitalization

The following items should be capitalized in OrthodoxWiki articles (some may seem obvious, but usage on these actually does vary):

God and Trinity
Church when referencing the Church catholic or a proper name; not when used as a generic reference for a local church
- Capitalized examples: the Orthodox Church, the Church of Bulgaria, the Albanian Orthodox Church, the Church of the Nativity
- Uncapitalized examples: the Russian church, the Orthodox churches, the church building
Tradition should be capitalized when referring to the mainstream beliefs and practices held by Orthodox churches to be binding on Orthodox Christians (i.e., "Big T" tradition); it is not capitalized when referring to local traditions which are not binding in character (i.e., "little T" tradition)
Scripture should be capitalized when referring to the Bible, though not when referring to the scriptures of other religions
Orthodox
Christian
East[ern] and West[ern] when referring to them as geo-cultural divisions (e.g., "the Church in East" or "Western theology"), but not as merely geographical references (e.g., "the western provinces" or "the apostles moved east")
Titles: Lord, Lady, Theotokos, Christ.
Titles with names: Saint John, Apostle Peter, Bishop Basil, etc., but not saint, apostle, bishop, etc., as regular nouns
Proper names: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Jesus, James, John, St. Paul's Church, Dormition Monastery, Church of Romania, etc.
Feast days: Pascha, Annunciation, Theophany, Transfiguration, etc. (Note: Within texts for a particular feast, it is not the title which is being referenced, but the event, so capitalization is unnecessary: "Your birth..." or "Thy nativity...," not "Your Birth..." or "Thy Nativity...")
O (as in O Lord, or O Lady Theotokos), i.e., the vocative

Other terms (including personal pronouns for God) leave uncapitalized, so use him in the middle of a sentence referring to God, not Him.

Italics

Use the '' (italic) markup. Example:

''This is italic.''

which produces

This is italic.

Quotations

Quotations should be enclosed between quotation marks (e.g., "quotation"), or, if long enough, with indentation (produced by putting a colon (:) at the beginning of a line).

Quotations should not be italicized unless they conform to the rules below for titles and words as words.

Titles

Italics should be used for titles of the following:

books
films
long poems
musical albums
newspapers
periodicals (journals and magazines)
plays
TV series
works of visual art

Italics are generally used for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works, such as the following, should be enclosed in quotation marks (""):

articles, essays, or papers
chapters of a longer work
episodes of a television series
short poems
short stories
songs

There are a few cases in which the title should be neither italicized nor placed in quotation marks:

the Bible
legal documents (examples: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence)

Words as Words

Use italics when writing about words as words or when referring to letters. For example:

The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787.

The letter E is the most common letter in English.

Dates

Links to dates within articles should include the full name of the month followed by the Arabic numeral of the day. Use January 1 not Jan. 1 or 1 January. This standardization is to assure that the Church Calendar page works correctly. Years should be left unlinked, because at this point we aren't including articles dedicated to particular years.

Wiki Mechanics

Stubs

A stub is an article or section which needs additional material in order to be complete. If you create or see an article or section which needs more information in order to be complete, please include the {{stub}} tag in the appropriate place in the body of the article. Also try to avoid creating empty articles that consist only of a stub notice unless you intend to expand them soon.

When you include the {{stub}} tag, this message will be seen in the article:

This article or section is a stub (i.e., in need of additional material). You can help OrthodoxWiki by expanding it.

Miscellaneous style considerations

Generally speaking, the best way to learn OrthodoxWiki's style is to look at existing, well-developed articles. Here follows a list of various conventions that are in place:

Begin articles with the subject in bold print as part of an introductory paragraph about the subject. The introductory paragraph should give a brief summary of the content of the article.
When creating wiki-links within an article, it's only necessary to link a given term once in the introductory section or when the term is first introduced in the article. In longer articles, it is acceptable to link a given term again at the beginning of later major sections.
When using a title of a person for the first time, spell it out completely (e.g., Metropolitan), but abbreviate it afterward (e.g., Metr.).
Try to vary the manner in which persons are referred to—it is not necessary to include St. in front of a saint's name in each instance nor the title and surname of a bishop each time you name him.
List See also (for internal links on related articles) and External link[s] sections as the last items in an article.

External links

Wikipedia:Manual of Style includes many useful bits regarding style for encyclopedia writing for a wiki.
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr., is the classic manual on English usage.