This page documents an official policy of the Kung Fu Panda Wiki.
All questions or suggestions concerning this policy must be submitted in the forums prior to an admin making changes, which may happen at any time with or without notification.
To help the Kung Fu Panda Wiki's readers easily navigate information from article to article, it is important that there is consistency in formatting, layout, and overall language. This Manual of Style contains a set of guidelines that addresses important styling areas to help achieve our goal in being clear and concise, as well as aesthetically pleasing. We highly encourage all editors to become familiar with these guidelines and to apply them to our articles.
These guidelines apply to all main namespace content. For other styling areas that are not covered, refer to Wikipedia's Manual of Style. For more details on specific elements of an article, refer to the Layout Guide. For any questions or comments on these terms, contact an admin.
Writing style
Vocabulary
Always use formal, neutral language when writing article content. Some tips to help with this:
Use uncontracted forms of words, as they are the default in encyclopedic style.
Incorrect: don't, it's, can't
Correct: do not, it is, cannot
Avoid phrases that address readers directly in a less-than-encyclopedic tone.
Remember that / Note that ...
Avoid phrases that make presumptions about readers' knowledge or supply a point of view. Simply state the sourced facts and allow readers to draw their own conclusions.
It is ironic / surprising / unexpected / amusing / coincidental / unfortunate that ...
Voice
Use active voice rather than passive voice. In other words, place more emphasis on the subject than the action or object of the sentence. See examples here.
Avoid story and personal-essay writing conventions.
Incorrect: The panda, heavily gasping for breath, crawled his way up the stairs to the Jade Palace, illuminated by the dawn light.
Correct: Po ran up to the Jade Palace.
Verb tenses
Descriptions
Use the appropriate tense when describing subjects.
Po is a panda. (Po never ceases to be a panda, so present-tense "is" is used.)
Lord Shen was the heir to the throne. (Shen's claim to the throne was eventually forfeit, as seen in Kung Fu Panda 2, so past-tense "was" is used.)
Tai Lung is the main antagonist of Kung Fu Panda. (Although Tai Lung was eventually defeated in the film, he is an antagonist throughout it, therefore present-tense "is" is used.)
Summaries
Use simple present-tense when writing media summaries, but use simple past-tense on in-universe articles.
On the Kung Fu Panda 2 article: Po stuffs forty bean buns into his mouth.
On Po's article: Po stuffed forty bean buns into his mouth.
Text styling
Italics
Use italics for the titles of works of literature and art; books, films (including short films), television series, music albums, and paintings all qualify under this.
Incorrect: Kung Fu Panda 2, KUNG FU PANDA 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, "Kung Fu Panda 2"
Correct:Kung Fu Panda 2
The one exception to the above is using italics within italics, in which case the title is in regular text format.
Incorrect:In Kung Fu Panda 3, Po meets his birth father Li.
Correct:In Kung Fu Panda 3, Po meets his birth father Li.
Do NOT use italics for the titles of articles, television episodes, songs, or other short works (sans short films; see bulletpoint above). They are instead enclosed in quotation marks.
Incorrect:Scorpion's Sting
Correct: "Scorpion's Sting"
Use italics to appropriately emphasize text in a sentence. Do NOT alternatively use bold or caps.
Use italics for onomatopoeias, as well as words and phrases that isn't found in a current English dictionary. Include punctuation if it is textually important (e.g. exclamation points).
"With the bending of his pinkie and the word 'skadoosh', Po performed the hold ..."[2]
Bold
When writing the introduction paragraph of an article, use bold for the main title, as well as any subsequent titles that redirect to that article.
"Dragon Warrior Noodles & Tofu (commonly known as Mr. Ping's Noodle Shop or simply the noodle shop) is a popular noodle restaurant in the Valley of Peace."[3]
Do NOT use bold to emphasize text in a sentence, as this can be misleading to the above bulletpoint. Though sentences are recommended to have no text emphasis, the preferred alternative method is to use italics (see above).
CAPS
Use fully capped letters in quotes and transcripts on a shouted word or phrase.
Proper names and titles each have a capital letter, apart from small words like the, a(n), of, etc. The exception to this is if the proper name begins with a small word, like episode titles.
Po ran up to the Jade Palace.
In "The Midnight Stranger", Po dons a mask to fight crime.
Punctuation
Apostrophes
Use the straight "typewriter" apostrophe (') rather than the curly "typographic" apostrophe (’).
Incorrect: Mr. Ping’s noodle shop
Correct: Mr. Ping's noodle shop
Use just one apostrophe with possessive nouns ending in an s, both singular and plural.
For usage, follow the rules of basic English grammar. For placement, follow the rules of "logical punctuation".
Use the serial comma when possible. The only exception to this is if the sentence looks too clustered with commas, in which case it is highly recommended the sentence be revised.
Incorrect: Po, Shifu and the Five went to the Jade Palace.
Correct: Po, Shifu, and the Five went to the Jade Palace.
Ellipses
Stylize an ellipsis by using three unspaced dots (...).
Other forms such as three spaced dots (. . .) or the pre-composed ellipsis character (…) are not useful to this site. The former, typically used in print, is unnecessarily wide and requires non-breaking spaces ( ) to keep it from breaking at the end of a line; the latter is not only harder to input and edit, but it will also sometimes appear too small in some fonts.
Text omission
When using ellipses to omit text, put a space on each side of it, with the exception of non-terminal punctuation (quotation marks, brackets, etc.).
"There's a saying: ... today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."[1]
Only use terminal punctuation after the ellipsis if it is textually important. This is typically for exclamation points or question marks and very rarely with periods.
Only use square brackets around the ellipsis ([...]) when there is a non-text-omission ellipsis already in the quotation.
"You... dragged me... [...] out here... for a bath?!"[1]
Pause in speech
When using ellipses to indicate a pause in a quotation, put a space after it but not before.
"You... dragged me... all the way out here... for a bath?!"[1]
Hyphens and dashes
Hyphen
In sentences, use hyphens (-) to connect non-typically paired words. Do NOT use it on words that are paired together.
Incorrect: kung-fu
Correct:Kung Fu Panda is a full-length feature film.
Do NOT use a hyphen or double hyphens (--) in place of an appropriate em- or en-dash (see below).
Em-dash
Use em-dashes (—) for a speaker signature mark, speech interruptions, as well as situations where it could be in place of a comma. Do NOT use double hyphens (--) in place of it. When using it in a sentence, do NOT use spaces before and after it.
Correct: "Prepare For Awesomeness." —Official tagline[2]
Correct: "... there's only one thing that matters. And that's—"[1]
Correct: "Po puts his heart—and his girth—into the task ..."[2]
Incorrect: "Po puts his heart -- and his girth -- into the task ..."
En-dash
Use en-dashes (–) for "up to and through" values such as time periods. Do NOT use spaces before and after it.
2011–2016
Quotation marks
Enclose quotations with double quotation marks ("), and enclose quotations within quotations with single quotation marks (').
Use only straight "typewriter" quotations (") rather than the curly "typographic" quotations (“”).
When deciding what punctuation to place inside or outside of the quotation marks, use the rules of British-style "logical punctuation".
The alternative method to this is American-style "aesthetic punctuation", which is widely used and accepted in North America. However, despite the franchise's American origins, this wiki prefers the British method to better illustrate accuracy and preciseness with the wiki's content rather than print aesthetics.
Spacing
Use only one space after terminal punctuation (periods, exclamation points, question marks, etc.). The use of double spaces is pointless as the MediaWiki text software automatically condenses any number of spaces to just one when rendering the page.
Blockquotes
Use the <blockquote></blockquote> tags to place a portion of text in indented italics.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Blockquote text that originates from off-site (e.g. plot synopses, descriptions, quotes from web articles, etc.) and provide a citation right before the closing tag. Do NOT change any part of the text. Only omit portions of the text when necessary and with properly used ellipses (see above).
Use blockquotes on any length of text.
It is common in some essays to only use blockquote styling for text that is at least four lines long, but this wiki does not follow that limit. If a plot synopsis is less than one line long, or more than a paragraph long, then it is appropriate to blockquote it.
Use of other regional variations of spelling is permitted in all non-article contexts, such as discussion features or when directly quoting from a source.
Dates and time
This wiki uses the Gregorian month-day-year format for dates. They are stylized as the month name, non-ordinal day number, a comma, and the numerical year. Days of the week (Sunday, Monday, etc.) and article words (the, of, etc.) are excluded entirely.
June 10, 2008
Numbers
In general, write whole numbers one through nine as words, write other numbers that take two words or fewer to say as either numerals or words, and write all other numbers as numerals. This applies to both ordinal and cardinal numbers.
In general, citations must be used where logical to do so. Anyone who encounters assertions that are dubious in accuracy and have not been sourced should add {{cite}} at the end of the sentence or paragraph.
For web articles and other related sources, this wiki uses a modified version of Wikipedia's citation style, using almost all of the same information except formatting it differently.
Wikipedia: Amidi, Amid (April 12, 2018). "TRAILER: New DreamWorks Version of 'The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'". Cartoon Brew.
The appropriate citation template should be used when citing a source. If one is not available for a particular source, providing a concise description of the source is recommended.
In general, links should be used where they are relevant and helpful in the context. Only internal links are used within the body of the article, with the occasional addition of links to other wiki communities/projects (i.e. Wikipedia and other wikis on FANDOM).
External links are reserved for the infobox (where appropriate) and the "External links" section of the article, and therefore should not be used in the article body. For more information, see External links in the layout guide.
Redundant links (e.g. the tallest people on Earth) are discouraged on this wiki, as they make the page look cluttered and take attention away from internal links.
Linking to a specific article is typically done about once per major section. The exception to this applies to all thumbnail captions and gallery images—these will always have any relevant links, regardless of the section or material it is placed next to.
The concept behind this is to determine what parts of the article a typical passing reader will most likely look at. If it is more probable that they would view just one particular section than look at the rest of the article, then links are repeated more often; if they are more likely to skim more of the article, then links are repeated less often. Images are the exception to this concept because they are almost always looked at, but not always with the text it is placed next to.
Image syntax should be placed on its own line above the paragraph's first line of text, but below any extra templates being used before it (e.g. section notices, {{Quote}}).
Thumbnails shown in the article are automatically scaled in width to 180px. Images containing important detail (maps, diagrams, charts, etc.) may need larger sizes than usual to make them readable.
Infobox images are automatically scaled in width to 250px. For more information on infobox guidelines, see Infobox in the layout guide.
Article galleries have their own section and page formatting; therefore, they have their own set of guidelines. See Gallery in the layout guide for more information.
Other
Do NOT place spaces on the sides of heading text. Because some pages have several headings, it was decided to save page byte space by not including unnecessary spaces.
Incorrect: == Heading ==
Correct: ==Heading==
When making lists, place a space after the asterisk (*) and hash (#) symbols in unordered and ordered lists respectively.
