Draft:Manual of style

intro here about the importance of applying a consistent style to make sure we appear reliable

content is still the number one focus, don't feel pressured to make it conform right away - if anything we can have a harmonious ecosystem of content creators and copy editors

Titles

no -kin suffix (still talking about whether to have x-kin redirects)

sentence case ('Otherkin and gender' not 'Otherkin and Gender')

singular ('Werewolf', not 'Werewolves')

Tone and content

no contractions ('it is', not 'it's')

language which doesn't promote things as objective fact but also doesn't cast aspersions - ultimately "some otherkin were their kintype in a past life" is not objectively verifiable, but it's easy to swing in the opposite direction and undermine ourselves by excessively couching things in terms of Believing and Claiming

similarly, striking a balance between not claiming that any experience is universal without using so many 'may's and 'can's that it sounds like we don't know what we're talking about

want to aim for a reeelatively low reading grade? questioning 13 year olds are gonna be using this and it shouldn't be completely impenetrable to them.

Article structure

first sentence of lead should either start with the article title or include it somewhere if that wouldn't be super grammatical. the first instance of the article title should be bolded

citations not included in lead if the same facts are stated further down the page, since it's supposed to be a summary

only internal links in article body, external links go at the end and should be carefully selected for usefulness and relevance

the section with the sources is called 'references'

then:

• see also
• external links at the very end if it exists (since it's the place where you 'get off' the wiki)

Misc

prefer name-name over username if it's well known that the person is ok with that ('Orion Scribner', not 'frameacloud')

if referring to a username in lowercase, use lowercase even at the beginning of sentences?

date format: month name, date, year (ie September 26th, 2016. i don't feel particularly strongly about this one, it's just what i've been using)

citation goes after punctuation! (i do feel strongly about this one - it looks weird to be otherwise!)