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Wikisimpsons:Style Guide Characters

Wikisimpsons - The Simpsons Wiki
Revision as of 10:03, May 7, 2021 by Solar Dragon (talk | contribs)
Style Guide: Characters
Style Guide Characters logo.png

The following is a style guide on how to create a high quality character page, and is part of our Manual of Style.

Aims

This style guide aims to help you write articles on all one-time, mentioned and recurring characters from The Simpsons, provided they fall within our notability policy.

Structure of an article

Naming

Naming should follow our naming policy. This states that full names should be used wherever possible. If not, the following conventions should be used:

Articles with brackets should use {{title}} to remove the bracketed content from the page title, unless it is "(character)", in which case the {{chnav}} should be used. For guest stars this is used as {{chnav||name}}. For other crew, the first should detail the person's job, most likely crew member. If the first parameter is changes, then |ngs=yes should be added.

Articles with conjectural titles should have {{Conjecture}} at the top of the article.

Character infobox

{{Character
|name = 
|identity = 
|image = 
|gender = 
|alias = 
|hair = 
|age = 
|status = 
|job = 
|relatives = 
|appearance =  
|mentioned = 
|voiced by = 
}}

Explanation

  • Name: The name of the character. This is usually the article name.
  • Identity: If the character article is for a superhero or another alter-ego, the identity is their real identity.
  • Image: Image of the character.
  • Gender: Gender of the character. If the article is for a character group with more than two genders, use |gender2 =
  • Alias: Nicknames and other names the character has gone by.
  • Hair: The character's hair color.
  • Age: The age of the character. This needs to be referenced with the media the age was mentioned. No guesses or estimates are allowed. See ages for more information.
  • Status: The last known status of the character. See character statuses for more information.
  • Job: The character's job or jobs.
  • Relatives: The known relatives of a character. If a character has many relatives, only use the immediate relatives.
  • Appearance: The first appearance of a character.
  • Mentioned: The first time a character is mentioned, only if they haven't appeared before then.
  • Voiced by: The voice actor for the character.

Maintenance templates

If the page lacks certain things, then respective templates should be added to the top of the article, or if it pertains to only one section, then at the top of that. The most commonly used are {{No voice}}, {{In-universe}}, {{Incomplete}}, {{Cleanup}}, {{Image needed}} and {{Engrish}}.

The article itself

The article should be written in-universe view, without mentioning episode names in the text. Episodes should be referenced with the <ref>"[[Episode Name]]"</ref> (quotation marks), while comics and other media should be referenced with <ref>''[[Comic Name]]''</ref> (italics). Any articles with references should have

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

at the bottom of the article.

Episode names are only allowed in the infobox, trivia, Behind the Laughter appearances, and references. If you come across an article about a character that is not written in-universe view, then you can help by fixing it, or by adding {{In-universe}}.

Note that one-time characters do not need references.

Non-canon

Non-canon information should follow the above conventions, but be split from canon information. For most characters, this will be through a non-canon section, which should feature {{noncanon}} or {{noncanoncomic}} at the start. If, however, the whole article pertains this information, then this template should place at the start of the article.

Appearances

For a very minor character a list is used, though for a recurring character, the following scroll box is used. Every appearance should be mentioned.

{{scroll|
*{{ul|Good Night}}
*{{ep|Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire}}
*{{THOH|Treehouse of Horror}}
*{{mov}}
*{{ep|Holidays of Future Passed}}
*{{spec|FOX's 25th Anniversary Special}}
*{{ad|Hard Times}}
*{{bon|The Amazing Colossal Homer}}
*{{game|The Simpsons: Hit & Run}}
*{{bk|The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album}}
}}

will produce

Appearances should be listed in the order of release date of media, and in the order of:

  1. Shorts
  2. Episodes
  3. Specials
  4. Adverts
  5. Comics
  6. Games
  7. Books
  8. Merchandise

Navigational templates

Every character page should end with {{Simpsons characters}}. In addition, various other templates are available to be used for different character groups, and any relevant ones should be added to a character's page. For a list, see Wikisimpsons:Navboxes

Categories

Every character should be in Category:Characters, which is automatically added by the infobox. Gender is also automatically added, as are many other categories, which are added with the relevant navbox, for example Category:Simpson family is added when {{Simpsons family}} is on the page.

Besides the automatic categories, the following should be considered:

There are also other minor categories you may consider. Every relevant category can be found within Category:Characters.

Other

  • If the article is lacking information, then add {{Character stub}} to the end of the article.
  • Every character's talk page should have {{Talkheader}} followed by {{Article Style Guide Characters}}.

Layout

The basic layout of a character article should follow this format, with unneeded sections left out:

  1. {{Title}} templates, Featured article templates, and the maintenance templates.
  2. Infobox
  3. Article opening
  4. History/Biography sections
  5. Non-canon sections
  6. Trivia
  7. Behind the Laughter
  8. Appearances
  9. References
  10. External links
  11. Navboxes, including {{Simpsons characters}}
  12. Categories

See the example for what a page should look like.