User:Obskyr/Style Guide

A quick introduction on how to write in the really nice The Cutting Room Floor style that you all know and love. Note that not all of these are strict rules - more like guidelines, to be thought about rather than adhered to. That said, some are more important than others. On discussion pages, almost none of these apply - as long as you can make yourself understood, you should be good.

One of the first things you will notice about TCRF is the loose approach to formality. While Wikipedia and sites like it often go for a very formal, compact, nothing-but-information style, TCRF lets creativity show a bit. In general, humor and character are allowed - and sometimes even encouraged - as long as it does not detract from the content or step over any rules or guidelines. To get the full TCRF guide experience, it is a good idea to look over everything in the help section.

Writing Style

Headings

All headings should be capitalized using standard "book" title case. This means that many - but not all - of the words in a heading should be capitalized. The only words not to be capitalized are:

• Conjunctions (and, but, etc.)
• Prepositions (in, on, for, etc.)
• Articles (the, a, an)

The first word of a heading should, however, always be capitalized. There are special cases for this too! If the first word is something which explicitly starts with a lower-case letter, it should not be capitalized - such as the e-Reader.

Humor

As previously mentioned, TCRF allows for a bit of humor in articles. However, this has a few caveats, as listed:

• Do not edit an article solely for humor. Adding in a bit of funny-bone tickling while writing new content is fine, but do not edit something just to make it funnier.
• Try to be mostly inoffensive. While humor is a universally accepted concept, some topics genuinely make some people uncomfortable. If you find something you find a bit too risqué, contact an administrator.
• Focus on information. If a joke is in the way of actual information, it should probably be removed.

Point of View

It is exceedingly important that articles are not written with a first-person point of view. This means that using first-person pronouns, such as "I" and "me" should not be used. This is for two reasons:

• Articles are collaborations. They are rarely written by a single person, so a singular first-person pronoun is out-of-place.
• It adds an air of opinion. TCRF is supposed to be informative - stating facts, even if in a slightly unorthodox manner. Attributing a person to the facts can sometimes make them seem like opinions.

If you see a first-person perspective be used, do not be afraid to edit it.

Grammar and Spelling

Correctness

While it almost goes without saying, it deserves a mention. Try to be as correct with spelling and grammar as possible. If you for any reason at all have trouble with this, a spell checker such as SpellCheckPlus may help.

American or British?

For consistency, TCRF uses the same grammar and spelling throughout the whole wiki. TCRF uses American English, since a majority of the userbase lives in countries utilizing such dialects. "Colour" and "grey" begone!

Article Data

Titles

Article titles should always, without exception, be the full title of the game it is about. That is really all there is to it! However, there are some special cases.

When a game shares a title with another game, or a version of a game differs enough from the others as to not fit in a "version differences" section, some clarification is needed. In such cases, add the platform, country and/or version name in parentheses after the game title, such as Bomberman GB (US), SimCity (SNES) or Maniac Mansion (NES, Japan).

Categories

TCRF has a wide range of categories, and it is very hard to know all of the applicable categories for any given article. To get some ideas, you can read the categories for a few featured articles and see if any apply to what the article you are editing is about.

Content requirements

In order to be a prim and proper article on TCRF, all articles need to fulfill certain requirements. As these are more strict rules, there is a separate help article on that very topic - creating articles.

Tagging

Minor Edits

When you edit a page, you may notice a checkbox labeled "This is a minor edit". This box is to be checked when the edit being made does not significantly change the content. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Small grammar fixes
• Small style fixes
• Clarity rewrites

However, this is where discretion has to be used. If a lot of minor changes are being made at once, an edit suddenly is not so minor anymore.

Edit Summary

The summary field located under the edit window should almost always be used. In it, briefly summarize what your edit does (such as "Grammar fix" or "Added seven new sections"). The summary does of course not need to be overly verbose.