Halopedia:Manual of Style: Difference between revisions

There is tension between the academic approach that names and classifies by the perspective of the field, and the layman's approach that uses common names and classifies according to common practice. We should try to accommodate the layman's approach wherever possible. The longer technical name may be described in parentheses the first time it is used.

When writing an article based on canon content, the author should do so from an in-universe perspective. In other words, imagine Halopedia like a [[CAA Factbook]] that records everything in the ''Halo'' universe. With that being said, the author should always use third-person writing and do so in past tense.

However, in-universe terminology and the past tense should only be constrained to in-universe articles. Real-world content (i.e. everything marked with the "Real World" era icon) must be written from an out-of-universe perspective. For example, plot summaries must use the present tense, summarizing the events in a "this is what happens in this chapter" fashion, as opposed to a "this is what happened in that chapter" fashion.

Similarly, in content written from a real-world perspective, more well-known nomenclature should take precedence; for example, "Elites" instead of "Sangheili". Do note that certain instances of "popular" terminology (e.g. titles such as "the Master Chief" and "the Arbiter" in reference to [[John-117]] and [[Thel 'Vadam]], respectively) are also proper in-universe terms and their use is perfectly acceptable in in-universe content as long as the subject's proper name has been previously established in the article's context.

Phrases like "his ultimate fate is unknown" or "what happened to the ship after that is a mystery" should not be included in most cases in which the subject's fate is simply not covered in released media. However, if the subject's status is noted to be unknown to the characters ''in-universe'', this is acceptable to mention in the article.

As a general rule, content overlap between articles should be avoided. Wiki articles ideally form interlinked tree structures in which additional information on a given topic can be accessed through [[Help:Links|links]]. For example, a character biography should present a summary of the character's life rather than a technical and detailed narration of the character's participation during every battle or other event, this being particularly pronounced with long pages about major characters. If an event has its own article, readers can learn more about the details of the event on its own page while the biography should focus on information that is most relevant to the character in question. This applies to other topics as well; for example, the article [[SPARTAN programs]] provides a concise summary of each supersoldier project while providing links to the articles covering each program more thoroughly.

However, the level of detail covered by an article should also be proportional to the overall amount of information available on the subject. For example, the article for [[Beamish]] describes a rather trivial event in detail because there is so little information on the character and his appearance is too canonically insignificant to be recorded elsewhere. Meanwhile, the article for [[John-117]] does not record the Master Chief's actions with the same level of detail as information of that nature is better described in linked articles for battles and other events.