StarCraft Wiki:General writing guidelines

These are guidelines that should be observed when editing content pages.

Image Usage
Please see the Help:Images page for information.

Linking
It isn't necessary to link an article more than once per paragraph.

Vehicle Names
The name of a ship should be italicized. For example:


 * The Hyperion stalked the stars striking fear into the hearts of Dominion commanders.

If a class name is followed by "-class" it should be italicized. For example:


 * The Hyperion was a Behemoth-class battlecruiser and so was a bucket of rusting bolts.
 * Their enemies cowered in fear as the Hyperion sped toward them, for an unleashed Behemoth did not make for a kindly dinner guest.

Alphanumeric designations should not be italicized. For example:
 * By some convoluted convention, the engineers ended up naming it the AH/G-24 Banshee. Fortunately, the Banshee's  engineering benefited from more deliberate thought.

See the naming policy for further guidelines.

Perspective
The perspective of writing in articles generally fall into two categories: in universe and out of universe. Put succinctly, in universe writing is written as if a person from within the StarCraft universe wrote it. Out of universe is written by a person who knows that StarCraft is fictional. Consider the following:


 * In StarCraft II, Jim Raynor was running out of belief and hope...

The above is written out of universe since the term "StarCraft II" is a "real world" term. If one wanted to put write that from in universe one might try the following:


 *  Four years after the Brood War, Jim Raynor was running out of belief and hope... 


 * Four years after the Brood War, Jim Raynor was running out of belief and hope...

Speculation
Speculation may come from a few sources. One source are conclusions derived from non-canon assumptions.


 * 1. The StarCraft Wiki is not the place to record or discuss non-canon conclusions.

Another source of speculation are conclusions derived from Canon factoids which are in dispute. For example, irreconcilable conflicts in opinion between two StarCraft products would be cause for a disputed fact.


 * 2. These conflicts should be recorded and given context in the out-of-universe sections of articles. If possible in-universe sections should make general statements that give no preference to the disputed options.

Unknowns are the ultimate source of speculation. The number of things known about the StarCraft Universe are vastly outnumbered by the things that are not known. For example, many characters and organizations have large "gaps" in their histories as they have yet to be elucidated upon in StarCraft products.


 * 3. Articles should not note where the out-of-universe knowledge is lacking. This is to avoid judging which unknowns are more important, and to make a more coherent article-writing strategy. As a general rule, invest time and energy into recording everything known, and invest none into noting the things that are not known. Another way of looking at it is that concentrating on the things known saves time and energy since there are fewer of them.

Verb Tense
Historical accounts in the past tense. For example:


 * Raynor protests the deployment of the psi-emitters at Tarsonis, but is ignored by Mengsk.

This would be inappropriate since the event that the sentence refers to has since happened. It would be better as:


 * Raynor protested the deployment of the psi-emitters at Tarsonis, but was ignored by Mengsk.