Style Guide
Style guidelines for the EN (English) World of Warships wikipedia are found below. Contributions made by players should adhere to these general guidelines; entries that do not may be deleted (or possibly edited until they comply, depending on the quality of the entry).
But English is English
Use North American English spellings. For example, "armour" is not correct.
Voice
- Second person ("you") should be avoided. Prefer "player" or "captain" and use third person notations wherever necessary. First person is never appropriate.
- Passive voice - "the ball was thrown by him" - is best avoided. "He threw the ball" is much more effective and less wimpy.
Tier
An example of the correct way to reference a specific tier is "Tier VI". "tier 6" — with the lower-case "T" and Arabic numeral rather than Roman — is incorrect. The lower case "tier" is used when referring to the generic tier, e.g. "service costs depend on ship tier".
Colliding numbers
When referencing quantities of something - such as gun barrels - do not use back-to-back Arabic numerals. Instead of typing "12 15-inch guns", please use the format "twelve (12) 15-inch guns", or "12x 15" guns" where space constrained.
Speaking of guns, remember to hyphenate "15-inch".
Ship and class names
- When referring to a specific ship, grammar rules dictate that an article is not used at all. Example: Bismarck’s fifth salvo, however, produced catastrophic results." Think of it this way: when referring to a specific person, his name is used. People aren't referred to as "the Dave" or "the Bill" or "the Janet". The same rule applies for ships. When they are singled out specifically by name, the definite article is dropped and they are simply referred to as Fletcher or Scharnhorst or Danae.
- Similarly, ship classes used as a noun do NOT require hyphenation. Example: "The Neptune class was never " ...
- When referring to an entire class of ships, a definite article is used. Example: "The Iowa class battleships were among the fastest battleships ever built." The subject here is a group of ships, which is why the definite article is used (in most cases, depending on how the sentence is structured).
She?
While some nations (e.g. Russia, Japan) use the male gender in reference to their warships, there is considerable resistance among readers to us doing so here. Use female gender pronouns to avoid contention.
