Due to the flexible nature of wikimarkup, there are many different ways articles can be layed out. However, only a few of them look nice, and only a couple out of those have been decided upon as the official standard for layout. An example of a well-layed-out article would be The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A well-layed-out article will flow properly, with no awkward whitespace (blank areas), and equally no "piling up" of items such as images and boxes. In some cases – especially when the article contains a lot of content – this is hard to achieve, but by sticking to a few simple rules, it should all work fine. However, before an article can be written, you have to make sure to put it in the right place.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding layout, bring them up in community issues.
Text
The text will form the main part of the article, and so it is important that it is layed out properly. In this respect, good authorship comes into play, with well-written guides being more interesting and engaging to read, and thus being more useful. If you aren't too competent with words, however, don't worry. Just try your best, lay out the article properly, and put {{cleanup}} at the top of the article to signify that it needs cleaning up. One of the key points of laying out text well is the effective use of paragraphs. Separate each idea out, and put them in different paragraphs by splitting them with a double-line-break (i.e. press enter twice after the first paragraph, then write the second). Note that a single line-break won't work: it has to be a double one. Note also that the splitting of paragraphs doesn't just work for text: other items separated by a double-line-break will also become separate paragraphs, which is sometimes less than desirable, and something to look out for.
A further thing to watch out for when writing the text of a guide is drivel. This is extraneous and redundant text which just bores the reader and doesn't help the guide in any way. Examples of drivel would be:
- Contributor lists: the history does this
- Editing guides: we have a perfectly good help and guidelines section
- "What this is/is not": again, we have a good guidelines section, and all content relevant to a game should be included in its guide
Headings
Another important part of writing good article text is splitting it up into useful headings. These allow the user to quickly navigate to places in the document using the table of contents automatically generated by MediaWiki, and also provide separation between sections.
When writing headings, an important thing to do is get the capitalisation correct. StrategyWiki has decided upon using lowercase titles with a capitalised initial letter (and also capitalised proper nouns), apart from specific examples in the standard headings list (such as == Table of Contents ==. So, instead of === Blue Balloons in March ===, the heading would be === Blue balloons in March === — "Blue" is the first word in the heading, so should be capitalised, and "March" is a proper noun, so should also be capitalised. Note that the largest heading used is == Level-two ==: it is policy never to use = Level-one = headings.
For more help on headings, try the headings help page.
StrategyWiki has several standard headings, which should be used wherever possible instead of custom ones:
- == Table of Contents ==
- === The basics ===
- === Walkthrough ===
- == See also ==
- == External links ==
Note that there is no "introduction" heading. It has been decided that such headings are redundant, and so you should never put an "introduction" heading. Similarly, headings duplicating the page name should never be used, as that's just reproducing the title generated by MediaWiki for the page. Such headings also make pages less maintainable, as if the page is moved, the "title" heading can't be changed without additional work.
Tables of Contents
Replaced by StrategyWiki:Guide/Organization#Table of Contents.
The basics
Walkthrough
Note that the links are all in compact format, and that sub-paging is used. It is a strongly enforced StrategyWiki policy that all pages in a guide should be sub-pages of the main page. It is also recommended that level walkthrough pages are done as sub-pages of the "/Walkthrough" sub-page of the main page, to keep things organised. When creating pages, please check to make sure if they're in the right place, as it takes a lot of effort to move a page (links have to be changed, people have to get used to the change, redirect pages have to be dealt with, etc.).
For more information on sub-paging, see the sub-paging policy.
Images
When including images in a guide, you must always make sure they are presented properly. After uploading them properly, they should be included in the page with (usually) the following wikimarkup: [[Image:image_name.png|thumb|left|Image caption goes here.]]. Note that the caption is a complete sentence, including a full stop at the end. It should convey the meaning of the image, or describe what's happening in a succinct manner. In general, images should be floated to the left or right, so that the text wraps around them as appropriate. To this end, they should be placed just beneath headings, with the text underneath them as follows:
=== A heading === [[Image:image_name.png|thumb|left|Image caption goes here.]] This is the text; it will continue for several paragraphs.
Note that if the text in a section isn't lengthy enough to be rendered taller than an image in the same section, the image will force the next section to wrap around it. This is not desirable, and in most cases, a {{-}} will have to be inserted before the next heading.
If many images are required for one section of a guide, a <gallery> tag is more appropriate than many floating thumbnails. This should be (most likely) placed at the bottom of the section, but any other placement between paragraphs is acceptable. It uses the following syntax:
<gallery> Image:image_name.png|Image caption goes here. Image:image_name2.png|Second image caption goes here. Image:image_name3.png|Third image caption goes here. </gallery>
Controller buttons
A special case for images is that of controller buttons. These should be placed throughout the guide, using the {{button}} template. As the {{button}} template is used in the form {{button|image_name_without_extension|Alternate text}}, only the images should be used (e.g. no additional text stating which button to press). They should be used in-line with the text, as seen on the Super Smash Bros. Melee basics page, which is a perfect example of how to use controller buttons.