Pensapedia:Manual of style

This guide aims to help contributors conform to standard and consistent formatting throughout Pensapedia. For more reference, see Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

Wikipedia content

One of Pensapedia's main goals is to create articles that have their own unique voice and perspective. While existing Wikipedia articles provide a great starting point for in-depth topics that require copious research, we should try to do more than just copy-paste entire articles. For examples of pages that have used Wikipedia articles as starting points, see Kent Hovind (Wikipedia version) and Pensacola Beach, Florida (Wikipedia version). In those examples, large chunks of the Wikipedia content has been removed entirely, or rewritten in a more locally-oriented voice, and many of the links that aren't relevant to our purposes have been converted to text only.

Wikipedia images, especially ones with free licenses, are very welcome at Pensapedia.

Linking

Words and phrases that have or should have Pensapedia articles, such as Pensacola Beach or Fort Pickens, should be linked using double bracket, i.e. [[Example]]. More generalised topics, such as Cuba and United States Congress, which are likely not specific and relevant enough to the purposes of Pensapedia, can be linked to their articles at Wikipedia using the format [[Wikipedia:Example|Example]]. To create a link to another external site, you can use the format [http://www.example.com Website title]; however, using external links inline with article text is discouraged and should be done sparingly. External links are best suited for "References" or "External link" sections at the end of articles.

Spelling

Pensapedia recognizes that there are various dialects and spelling conventions in the English language and accordingly does not officially endorse or discourage use of any one set of conventions. However, as Pensapedia is an encyclopedic project centered around an American city, where American English is the prevalent dialect, American spellings are most commonly used. Regardless of which conventions or variants editors choose to use, they should make every effort to be consistent within articles, and should not alter acceptable spellings within articles except for the purpose of consistency.