Kerbal Space Program 2 Wiki:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English KSP 2 Wiki articles. This main page is supplemented by further detail pages on certain topics and categories. For all intents and purposes, this wiki intends to broadly follow the definitions and guidelines established by Wikipedia's MoS. To this effect, significant verbiage on this page is either directly reflective of, or heavily influenced by, that MoS. In the event of any contradiction, this Wiki and its provisions takes precedence.

Editors should write articles using straightforward, succinct, easily understood language and structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting (which are detailed in this guide).

Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason.

Retaining existing styles

It is generally discouraged for an editor to change the style of an article from one style to another without substantial reason. Edit-warring over style is never acceptable.

Unjustified changes from an acceptable, consistently applied style in an article to a different style are generally subject to being reverted.

If an editor believes that an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, seek a consensus by discussing on the article's talk page. If an issue is to be raised regarding general application of the MoS, then discuss on the MoS talk page itself. Unless consensus is reached, the preexisting style is to be maintained. Lack of consensus in once instance does not prohibit further discussion later on should new sufficient, constructive, and appropriate discussion points be introduced.

Overall article guidelines

Article titles

A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic, balancing the criteria of being natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles.

Note the following general points of article title formatting:

Capitalize the initial letter (aside from rare exceptions), but otherwise follow sentence case (Dating simulator update), not title case (Dating Simulator Update)
- Official proper labels of named in-game elements are to be capitalized per title case per typical convention of proper nouns (Vehicle Assembly Building, Orbital Rocketry, etc.)
The final character should not be punctuation unless it is an inseparable part of a name (P.A.I.G.E., Space Truckin') or an abbreviation, or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required.

Section organization

An article's content should begin with an introductory lead section - a concise summary of the article - which is never divided into sections. The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections.

Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.

Certain standardized templates and wikicode that are not sections go at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, and in the following order:

A disambiguation hatnote, most of the time with the {{Hatnote}} template (see also Wikipedia:Hatnote § Hatnote templates)
No-output templates that indicate the article's established date format and English-language variety, if any (e.g., {{Use dmy dates}}, {{Use Canadian English}})
Banner-type maintenance templates, Dispute and Cleanup templates for article-wide issues that have been flagged (otherwise used at the top of a specific section, after any sectional hatnote such as {{main}})
An infobox, which is optional (except in applicable articles such as parts or celestial bodies); usually also includes the first image
An introductory image, when an infobox is not used, or an additional image is desired for the lead section (for unusually long leads, a second image can be placed midway through the lead text)
If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article, insert {{main|Article name}} or {{further|Article name}} immediately under the section heading.

Several kinds of material (generally optional) may appear after the main body of an article, in the following order:

Internal links to related articles, with section heading "See also"
Notes and references, with a section heading "Notes" or "References" (usually the latter)
Relevant and appropriate websites that have not been used as sources and do not appear in the earlier appendices, using the heading "External links", which may be made a subsection of "Further reading" (or such links can be integrated directly into the "Further reading" list instead)
The following final items never take section headings:
- Internal links organized into navigational boxes
- Categories, which should be the very last material in the article's source code if there are no stub templates
- Stub templates, if needed, which should follow the categories

Section headings

Section headings should generally follow the guidance for article titles (above), and should be presented in sentence case, not title case. The heading must be on its own line, with one blank line before it. A single blank line after is optional and ignored, but *two* blank lines will create additional visible space as is not to be used.

For technical reasons, section headings should:

Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place.
Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
Not contain images or icons.
Not contain <math> markup.
Not contain citations or footnotes.
Not misuse description list markup (";") to create pseudo-headings.
Not contain template transclusions.

These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.

As a matter of consistent style, section headings should:

Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g., Early life, not Jeb's early life or His early life.
Not refer to a higher-level heading, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.
Not be numbered or lettered as an outline.
Not be phrased as a question, e.g., Languages, not What languages are spoken in Deb Deb?.
Not use color or unusual fonts that might cause accessibility problems.
Not be wrapped in markup, which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues.

Guidelines per article type

Specialized MoS subpages exist for different types of articles. Refer to them for in-depth guidelines on their namesake articles.

These guidelines are for the proper structure and syntax of NS:Data pages which contain information on parts, bodies, et cetera.

Data

File uploads

The subject of an image should be clearly visible and framed sensibly, near the center of the image. Filenames should be succinct and directly relate to the subject of the image.

Part thumbnails

Part thumbnails are used in info boxes and data tables. They should be uploaded as .png files with a transparent background. The filename of a part thumbnail should be parsed as such:

Capitalization mimicking that part names
Exclusion of quotation marks " and periods .
Replacement of spaces with underscores _

Examples: Mk1_Explorer.png HFT-S-250.png LV-2000_Trumpet.png Tail_Connector_A.png RGSCM-01_Science_Jr_Jr.png AIRBRAKES.png