Wikipedia:Manual Of Style (punctuation)
Editors should write articles using straightforward, succinct, and easily understood language. Editors should structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting (which are detailed in this guide).
Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason. Edit warring over stylistic choices is unacceptable.
New content added to this page should directly address a persistently recurring style issue.
Retaining existing styles
Sometimes the MoS provides more than one acceptable style or gives no specific guidance. When either of two styles is acceptable it is generally considered inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change.
Edit warring over style, or enforcing optional style in a bot-like fashion without prior consensus, is never acceptable.
Unjustified changes from one acceptable, consistently applied style in an article to a different style may generally be reverted. Seek opportunities for commonality to avoid disputes over style.
If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, seek consensus by discussing this at the article's talk page or – if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself – at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. If a discussion does not result in consensus for the change at the article, continue to use the already-established style there. If discussion fails to reach a consensus regarding which of two or more competing styles to use at all, then default to the style that was used in the first post-stub version of the article in which one of the applicable styles appeared. (This fall-back position does not give unchallengeable primacy to that particular style during consensus discussion, nor give the editor who imposed that earliest style any more say in the discussion.)
Article titles, sections, and headings
Article titles
A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic, balancing the criteria of being natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles.
For formatting guidance see the Wikipedia:Article titles § Article title format section, noting the following:
- Capitalize the initial letter (except in rare cases, such as eBay), but otherwise follow sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects), except where title case would be used in ordinary prose. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization).
- To italicize, add
{{italic title}}
near the top of the article. For mixed situations, use, e.g.,{{DISPLAYTITLE:Interpretations of ''2001: A Space Odyssey''}}
, instead. Use of italics should conform to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Italic type. - Do not use articles (a, an, or the) as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless it is an inseparable part of a name (The Hague) or of the title of a work (A Clockwork Orange, The Simpsons).
- Normally use nouns or noun phrases: Early life, not In early life.
- The final character should not be punctuation unless it is an inseparable part of a name (Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) or an abbreviation (Inverness City F.C.), or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (John Palmer (1814 schooner)).
- Whenever quotation marks or apostrophes appear, add a redirect for the same title using apostrophes.
Subject both to the above and to Wikipedia:Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly § Punctuation, applies also to the title.
Section organization
An article's content should begin with an introductory lead section – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections sections.
. The remainder of the article is typically divided intoInfoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.
Certain standardized templates and wikicode that are not sections go at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, and in the following order:
- A short description, with the
{{Short description}}
template - A disambiguation hatnote, most of the time with the
{{Hatnote}}
template - No-output templates that indicate the article's established date format and English-language variety, if any (e.g.,
{{Use dmy dates}}
,{{Use Canadian English}}
) - Banner-type maintenance templates, Dispute and Cleanup templates for article-wide issues that have been flagged (otherwise used at the top of a specific section, after any sectional hatnote such as
{{main}}
) - An infobox, which is optional (except in special cases like
{{Taxobox}}
and{{Chembox}}
, or a variant thereof, at applicable articles); usually also includes the first image - An introductory image, when an infobox is not used, or an additional image is desired for the lead section (for unusually long leads, a second image can be placed midway through the lead text)
In the Vector 2022 skin, the table of contents is separate from the article content. In some older skins, a navigable table of contents appears automatically just after the lead if an article has at least four section headings.
If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article {{main|Article name}}
or {{further|Article name}}
immediately under the section heading.
As explained in detail in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers, several kinds of material (mostly optional) may appear after the main body of the article, in the following order:
- Books or other works created by the subject of the article, under a section heading "Works", "Publications", "Discography", "Filmography", etc. as appropriate (avoid "Bibliography", confusable with reference citations)
- Internal links to related English Wikipedia articles, with section heading "See also"
- Notes and references, with a section heading "Notes" or "References" (usually the latter), or a separate section for each in this order ; avoid "Bibliography", confusable with the subject's works
- Relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources; use the section heading "Further reading"; be highly selective, as Wikipedia is not a bibliographic directory
- Relevant and appropriate websites that have not been used as sources and do not appear in the earlier appendices, using the heading "External links", which may be made a subsection of "Further reading" (or such links can be integrated directly into the "Further reading" list instead); link templates for sister-project content also usually go at the top of this section when it is present (otherwise in the last section on the page)
- The following final items never take section headings:
- Internal links organized into navigational boxes
- Authority control metadata, if needed, using
{{Authority control}}
(distinguishes uses of the same name for two subjects, or multiple names for one subject) - Categories, which should be the very last material in the article's source code if there are no stub templates
- Stub templates, if needed, which should follow the categories
Stand-alone list articles have some additional layout considerations.
Section headings
Section headings should generally follow the guidance for article titles (above), and should be presented in sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects in developing countries), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects in Developing Countries).
The heading must be on its own line, with one blank line just before it; a blank line just after is optional and ignored (but do not use two blank lines, before or after, because that will add unwanted visible space).
For technical reasons, section headings should:
- Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place.
- Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
- Not contain images or icons.
- Not contain <math> markup.
- Not contain citations or footnotes.
- Not misuse description list markup ("
;
") to create pseudo-headings. - Not contain template transclusions.
These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.
As a matter of consistent style, section headings should:
- Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g., Early life, not Smith's early life or His early life.
- Not refer to a higher-level heading, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.
- Not be numbered or lettered as an outline.
- Not be phrased as a question, e.g., Languages, not What languages are spoken in Mexico?.
- Not use color or unusual fonts that might cause accessibility problems.
- Not be wrapped in markup, which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues.
These are broadly accepted community preferences.
An invisible comment on the same line must be inside the == ==
markup:
==Implications<!--This comment works fine.-->==
==<!--This comment works fine.-->Implications==
==Implications==<!--This comment causes problems.-->
<!--This comment breaks the heading completely.-->==Implications==
It is more usual practice to put such comments below the heading.
Before changing a heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to it. If there are many links to the old title, create an anchor with that title to ensure that these still work. Similarly, when linking to a section, leave an invisible comment at the heading of the target section, naming the linking articles, so that if the heading is later altered these can be fixed. For (a combined) example:
==Implications{{subst:Anchor|Consequences}}==
<!-- Section linked from [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Dennett]]. -->
which will be saved in the article as:
==Implications<span class="anchor" id="Consequences"></span>
==
<!-- Section linked from [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Dennett]]. -->
The advantage of using {{subst:Anchor}}
, or simply inserting the <span>
tags directly, is that when edits are made to the section in the future, the anchor will not be included in page history entries as part of the section name. When {{Anchor}}
is used directly, that undesirable behavior does occur. Note: if electing to insert the span directly, do not abbreviate it by using a self-closing tag, as in ==Implications<span id="Consequences" />==
, since in HTML5 that XML-style syntax is valid only for certain tags, such as <br />
. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Avoiding broken section links for further discussion.
Heading-like material
The above guidance about sentence case, redundancy, images, and questions also applies to headers of tables (and of table columns and rows). However, table headings can incorporate citations and may begin with, or be, numbers. Unlike page headings, table headers do not automatically generate link anchors. Aside from sentence case in glossaries, the heading advice also applies to the term entries in description lists. If using template-structured glossaries, terms will automatically have link anchors, but will not otherwise. Citations for description-list content go in the term or definition element, as needed.
National varieties of English
National varieties of English (for example, American English or British English) differ in vocabulary (elevator vs. lift ), spelling (center vs. centre), and occasionally grammar . Articles such as English plurals and Comparison of American and British English provide information about such differences. The English Wikipedia prefers no national variety over others.
An article's date formatting (December 25, 2024 vs. 25 December 2024) is also related to national varieties of English – see MOS:DATEFORMAT and especially MOS:DATETIES and MOS:DATEVAR.
Consistency within articles
The conventions of a particular variety of English should be followed consistently within a given article. Exceptions include:
- Quotations and titles of works (such as books, films, and music) should be given as they appear in sources. However, there are certain situations where this principle is not followed in order to maintain a level of typographic conformity across the encyclopedia: see § Typographic conformity.
- Proper names use the subject's own spelling, e.g., joint project of the United States Department of Defense and the Australian Defence Force; International Labour Organization;
- For articles about chemistry-related topics, the international standard spellings aluminium, sulfur, caesium (and derivative terms) should be used regardless of the variety of English otherwise employed in the article. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry) § Element names.
Opportunities for commonality
For an international encyclopedia, using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable.
- Use universally accepted terms rather than those less widely distributed, especially in titles. For example, glasses is preferred to the national varieties spectacles (British English) and eyeglasses (American English); ten million is preferable to one crore (Indian English).
- If a variant spelling appears in a title, make a redirect page to accommodate the others, as with artefact and artifact, so that all variants can be used in searches and linking.
- Terms that differ between varieties of English, or that have divergent meanings, may be glossed to prevent confusion, for example, the trunk (American English) or boot (British English) of a car ....
- Use a commonly understood word or phrase in preference to one that has a different meaning because of national differences (rather than alternate, use alternative or alternating, as appropriate), except in technical contexts where such substitution would be inappropriate (alternate leaves; alternate law).
- When more than one variant spelling exists within a national variety of English, the most commonly used current variant should usually be preferred, except where the less common spelling has a specific usage in a specialized context, e.g., connexion in Methodist connexionalism.
Strong national ties to a topic
An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation. For example:
- Afrikaners (South African English)
- American Civil War (American English)
- Australian Defence Force (Australian English)
- Christchurch (New Zealand English)
- Dublin (Hiberno-English)
- Great Fire of London (British English)
- Lagos (Nigerian English)
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Pakistani English)
- Mumbai (Indian English)
- Vancouver (Canadian English)
- Wanchai Tower (Hong Kong English)
For topics with strong ties to Commonwealth of Nations countries and other former British territories, use Commonwealth English orthography, largely indistinguishable from British English in encyclopedic writing (excepting Canada, which uses a different orthography).
Retaining the existing variety
When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or the change reduces ambiguity), there is no valid reason for changing from one acceptable option to another.
When no English variety has been established and discussion does not resolve the issue, use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety. The established variety in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate variety of English template on its talk page.
An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. {{subst:uw-engvar}}
may be placed on an editor's talk page to explain this.
Capital letters
Wikipedia article titles and section headings use sentence case, not title case; see Wikipedia:Article titles and § Section headings. For capitalization of list items, see § Bulleted and numbered lists. Other points concerning capitalization are summarized below. Full information can be found at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters. The central point is that Wikipedia does not capitalize something unless it is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources.
Capitalization of The
Generally, do not capitalize the word the in mid-sentence: throughout the United Kingdom, not throughout The United Kingdom. Conventional exceptions include certain proper names (he visited The Hague) and most titles of creative works (Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings – but be aware that the might not be part of the title itself, e.g., Homer composed the Odyssey).
There are special considerations for: band names · institution names · nicknames · titles of works · trademarks.
Titles of works
The English-language titles of compositions (books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (as detailed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Composition titles). The first and last words in an English-language title are always capitalized.
- Correct: An Eye for an Eye
- Correct: Worth the Fighting For
Capitalization in non-English language titles varies, even over time within the same language; generally, retain the style of the original for modern works, and follow the usage in current English-language reliable sources for historical works. When written in the Latin alphabet, many of these items should also be in italics, or enclosed in quotation marks.
- Correct: Les Liaisons dangereuses
- Correct: "Hymnus an den heiligen Geist"
Titles of people
- In generic use, use lower case for words such as president, king, and emperor (De Gaulle was a French president; Louis XVI was a French king; Three prime ministers attended the conference).
- Directly before the person's name, such words begin with a capital letter (President Obama, not president Obama). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper names (David Cameron was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Hirohito was Emperor of Japan; Louis XVI was King of France). Royal styles take capitals (Her Majesty; His Highness); exceptions may apply for particular offices.
Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines
- Religions, sects, and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally, "the" is not capitalized before such names (the Unitarians, not The Unitarians).
- Religious texts are capitalized, but often not italicized (the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, the Talmud, the Granth Sahib, the Bible). Do not capitalize "the" when using it in this way. Some derived adjectives are capitalized by convention, and some are not (biblical, but Quranic); if unsure, check a dictionary.
- Honorifics for deities, including proper names and titles, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit, the Horned One, Bhagavan). Do not capitalize "the" in such cases or when referring to major religious figures or characters from mythology (the Prophet, the Messiah, the Virgin). Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized (many gods; the god Woden; saints and prophets).
- Pronouns for figures of veneration or worship are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures (God and his will).
- Broad categories of mythical or legendary beings start with lower-case letters (elf, fairy, nymph, unicorn, angel), although in works of fantasy, such as the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and some video games, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings form a culture or race in a fictional universe. Capitalize the names or titles of individual creatures (the Minotaur, Pegasus) and of groups whose name and membership are fixed (the Magi, or the Three Wise Men, the Furies). Generalized references are not capitalized (these priests; several wise men; cherub-like).
- Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood and the Exodus; but annual flooding and an exodus of refugees).
- Philosophies, theories, movements, and doctrines use lower case unless the name derives from a proper name (capitalism versus Marxism) or has become a proper name (republican, a system of political thought; Republican, a political party). Use lower case for doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as opposed to specific events), even if they are capitalized by some religious adherents (virgin birth, original sin, transubstantiation).
- Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized in the context of philosophical doctrine (Truth, the Good); used more broadly, they are in lower case (Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice). Use capitals for personifications represented in art (the guidebook mentioned statues of Justice and Liberty).
- Eponyms are capitalized (Edwardian, De Morgan's laws, Alice in Wonderland syndrome, plaster of Paris, Platonic idealism, Draconian constitution of Athens), except in idiomatic uses disconnected from the original context and usually lower-cased in sources (a platonic relationship; complained of draconian workplace policies). An entire phrase in which an eponym is an adjective is not capitalized except when the phrase is itself a proper name (e.g., the title of a published work: The China Syndrome).
Calendar items
- Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter (June, Monday; the Fourth of July refers only to the US Independence Day – otherwise July 4 or 4 July).
- Seasons are in lower case (her last summer; the winter solstice; spring fever), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events (Old Man Winter; competed on the Spring Circuit).
Animals, plants, and other organisms
When using taxonomic ("scientific") names, capitalize and italicize the genus: Berberis, Erithacus. (Supergenus and subgenus, when applicable, are treated the same way.) Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: Berberis darwinii, Erithacus rubecula superbus, Acacia coriacea subsp. sericophylla; no exception is made for proper names forming part of scientific names. Higher taxa (order, family, etc.) are capitalized in Latin (Carnivora, Felidae) but not in their English equivalents (carnivorans, felids); they are not italicized in either form, except for viruses, where all names accepted by the ICTV are italicized (Retroviridae).
Cultivar and cultivar group names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized (including the word Group in the name); cultivar names appear within single quotes (Malus domestica 'Red Delicious'), while cultivar groups do not (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group).
English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case in article prose (plains zebra, mountain maple, and southwestern red-tailed hawk) and in sentence case at the start of sentences and in other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized. They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: Przewalski's horse, California condor, and fair-maid-of-France. This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: bird of prey, oak, great apes, Bryde's whales, livestock guardian dog, poodle, Van cat, wolfdog. When the common name coincides with a scientific taxon, do not capitalize or italicize, except where addressing the organism taxonomically: A lynx is any of the four medium-sized wild cat species within the genus Lynx. Non-English vernacular names, when relevant to include, are handled like any other non-English terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it. Non-English names that have become English-assimilated are treated as English (ayahuasca, okapi).
Standardized breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards. Examples: German Shepherd, Russian White goat, Berlin Short-faced Tumbler. As with plant cultivars, this applies whether or not the included noun is a proper name, in contrast to how vernacular names of species are written. However, unlike cultivars, breeds are never put in single quotation marks, and their names are never part of a scientific name. A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standards (rare cases include Norwegian Forest Cat and American Quarter Horse).
Create redirects from alternative capitalization and spelling forms of article titles, and from alternative names, e.g., Adélie Penguin, Adelie penguin, Adelie Penguin and Pygoscelis adeliae should all redirect to Adélie penguin.
Celestial bodies
The words sun, earth, moon, and solar system do not take capitals in general use (The sun was over the mountain top; The tribal people thought of the whole earth as their home). They are capitalized when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ('Unconquered Sun') was the Roman sun god) or when used as the name of a specific body in a scientific or astronomical context (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).
Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names, and therefore capitalized (The planet Mars is in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux). The first letter of every word in such a name is capitalized (Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri; Milky Way, not Milky way). Words such as comet and galaxy should be capitalized when they form part of a proper name, but not when they are used as a generic term (Halley's Comet is the most famous of the comets; The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy).
Compass points
Do not capitalize directions such as north or their related forms (We took the northern road) except when they are parts of proper names (Great North Road, Great Western Drive, South Pole).
Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status, including informal conventional names (Southern California; the Western Desert), and derived terms for people (e.g., a Southerner as someone from the Southern United States). Do not capitalize descriptive names for regions that have not attained the status of proper names, such as southern Poland.
Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated, depending on the variety of English adopted in the article. Southeast Asia and northwest are more common in American English; but South-East Asia and north-west in British English. In cases such as north–south dialogue and east–west orientation, use an en dash; see § En dashes: other uses.
Proper names versus generic terms
Capitalize names of particular institutions (the founding of the University of Delhi; the history of Stanford University) but not generic words for institutions (the high school is near the university). Do not capitalize the at the start of an institution's name, regardless of the institution's preferred style. There are rare exceptions, when a leading The is represented by a T in the organization's acronym: The International Cat Association (TICA).
Treat political or geographic units similarly: The city has a population of 55,000; The two towns merged to become the City of Smithville. Do not mimic the style of local newspapers which refer to their municipality as the City or The City; an exception is the City of London, referred to as the City in a context that already makes the subject clear, as distinct from London and Greater London. When in doubt, use the full name for accessibility reasons; users of text-to-speech systems usually cannot hear a difference between city and City.
Ligatures
Ligatures should be used in languages in which they are standard (hence Moreau's last words were clin d'œil is preferable to Moreau's last words were clin d'oeil) but not in English (encyclopedia or encyclopaedia, not encyclopædia), except in proper names (Æthelstan, not Aethelstan).
Abbreviations
Abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases. In strict analysis, they are distinct from contractions, which use an apostrophe (e.g., won't, see § Contractions), and initialisms. An initialism is formed from some or all of the initial letters of words in a phrase. Below, references to abbreviations should be taken to include acronyms, and the term acronym to apply also to initialisms.
Write first occurrences in full
When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression:
Do not use capitals in the full version merely because capitals are used in the abbreviation: an early Local Area Network (LAN).
Except in special circumstances, common abbreviations (such as PhD, DNA, USSR) need not be expanded even on first use.
Plural forms
Pluralize acronyms by adding -s or -es: Three CD-ROMs and two BIOSes were released. Do not use apostrophes to form plurals: Three CD-ROM's and two BIOS's were released.
Punctuation and spacing
An abbreviation may or may not be terminated with a full point (also called a period or full stop). A consistent style should be maintained within an article. North American usage is typically to end all abbreviations with a period/point (Dr. Smith of 42 Drummond St.) but in common British and Australian usage, no period/point is used if the abbreviation (contraction) ends in the last letter of the unabbreviated form (Dr Smith of 42 Drummond St) unless confusion could result. This is also common practice in scientific writing. Regardless of punctuation, words that are abbreviated to more than one letter are spaced (op. cit. not op.cit. or opcit). There are some exceptions: PhD for "Philosophiae Doctor"; BVetMed for "Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine". In most situations, Wikipedia uses no such punctuation inside acronyms and initialisms: GDP, not G.D.P.
US and U.S.
US is a commonly used abbreviation for United States, although U.S. – with periods and without a space – remains common in North American publications, including in news journalism. Multiple American style guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style (since 2010), now deprecate "U.S." and recommend "US".
For commonality reasons, use US by default when abbreviating, but retain U.S. in American or Canadian English articles in which it is already established, unless there is a good reason to change it. Because use of periods for abbreviations and acronyms should be consistent within any given article, use US in an article with other country abbreviations, and especially avoid constructions like the U.S. and the UK. In longer abbreviations that incorporate the country's initials (USN, USAF), never use periods. When the United States is mentioned with one or more other countries in the same sentence, US (or U.S.) may be too informal, especially at the first mention or as a noun instead of an adjective (France and the United States, not France and the US). Do not use the spaced U. S. or the archaic U.S. of A., except when quoting. Do not use U.S.A. or USA except in a quotation, as part of a proper name (Team USA), or in certain technical and formal uses (e.g., the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, FIFA, and IOC country codes).
Circa
To indicate approximately, the use of {{circa}}
, showing as c., is preferred over circa, c., ca., or approx.
Avoid unwarranted use
Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal. For example:
- Do not use approx. for approximate(ly) except in an infobox or table (in which case use
{{abbr|approx.|approximately}}
at first occurrence: approx.). - Do not use the legalism Smith J for Justice Smith.
Do not invent
Avoid devising new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, World Union of Billiards is good as a translation of Union Mondiale de Billard, but neither it nor the reduction WUB is used by the organization or by independent sources; use the original name and its official abbreviation, UMB.
If it is necessary to abbreviate in a tight space, such as a column header in a table, use widely recognized abbreviations. For example, for New Zealand gross national product, use NZ and GNP, with a link if the term has not already been written out in the article: NZ GNP. Do not make up initialisms such as NZGNP.
HTML tags and templates
Either <abbr>
or {{abbr}}
can be used for abbreviations and acronyms: <abbr title="World Health Organization">WHO</abbr>
or {{abbr|WHO|World Health Organization}}
will generate WHO; hovering over the rendered text causes a tooltip of the long form to pop up.
Ampersand
In normal text and headings, use and instead of the ampersand (&): January 1 and 2, not January 1 & 2. But retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, the title of a work, or a trademark, such as in Up & Down or AT&T. Elsewhere, ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion where space is extremely limited (e.g., tables and infoboxes). Quotations may be cautiously modified, especially for consistency where different editions are quoted, as modern editions of old texts routinely replace ampersands with and (just as they replace other disused glyphs, ligatures, and abbreviations). Another frequent permissible but not required use is in short bibliographic references to works by multiple authors, e.g.: <ref>Lubbers & Scheepers (2002); Van Hiel & Mervielde (2002); Swyngedouw & Giles (2007); Van Hiel (2012).</ref>.
Italics
Emphasis
Italics are used for emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals. But overuse diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead.
Use <em>...</em>
or {{em|...}}
for emphasis. This allows user style sheets to handle emphasis in a customized way, and helps reusers and translators.
- Correct:
The meerkat is <em>not</em> actually a cat.
- Correct:
The meerkat is {{em|not}} actually a cat.
Titles
Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and artworks). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, storylines, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks.
Italics are not used for major religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these titles should also be in title case.
Words as words
Use italics when mentioning a word or character the term panning is derived from panorama; the most common letter in English is e). When a whole sentence is mentioned, double quotation marks may be used instead, with consistency (The preposition in She sat on the chair is on; or The preposition in "She sat on the chair" is "on"). Quotation marks may also be used for shorter material to avoid confusion, such as when italics are already heavily used in the page for another purpose (e.g., for many non-English words and phrases). Mentioning (to discuss grammar, wording, punctuation, etc.) is different from quoting (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source). Quotation is done with quotation marks, never italics, nor both at once
or a string of words up to one sentence (A closely related use of italics is when introducing or distinguishing terms: The natural numbers are the integers greater than 0.
Non-English words
Italics are indicated for non-English phrases and isolated non-English words that are not commonly used in everyday English. However, proper names (such as place names) in other languages are not usually italicized, nor are terms in non-Latin scripts. The {{lang}}
template and its variants support all ISO 639 language codes, correctly identifying the language and automatically italicizing for you. Please use these templates rather than just manually italicizing non-English material.
Scientific names
Use italics for the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms except viruses at the genus level and below (italicize Panthera leo and Retroviridae, but not Felidae). The hybrid sign is not italicized (Rosa × damascena), nor is the "connecting term" required in three-part botanical names (Rosa gallica subsp. officinalis).
Quotations in italics
Do not put quotations in italics. Quotation marks (or block quoting) alone are sufficient and the correct ways to denote quotations. Italics should only be used if the quoted material would otherwise call for italics. (See below.)
Italics within quotations
Use italics within quotations to reproduce emphasis that exists in the source material or to indicate the use of non-English words. The emphasis is better done with {{em}}
. If it is not clear that the source already included italics (or some other styling) for emphasis, or to indicate when emphasis was not used in the original text but was editorially added later, add the editorial note [emphasis in original] or [emphasis added], respectively, after the quotation.
- For example: "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." [emphasis in original].
Effect on nearby punctuation
Italicize only the elements of the sentence affected by the emphasis. Do not italicize surrounding punctuation.
- Incorrect: What are we to make of that? (The question mark applies to the whole sentence, not just to the emphasized that, so it should not be italicized.)
- Correct: What are we to make of that?
- Correct: Four of Patrick White's most famous novels are A Fringe of Leaves, The Aunt's Story, Voss, and The Tree of Man. (The commas, the period, and the word and are not italicized.)
Quotations
Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, excessive use of them is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style and may be copyright infringement, so most of the content should be in the editor's own words. Consider paraphrasing quotations into plain and concise text when appropriate (while being aware that close paraphrasing can still violate copyright). Do not put quotations in italics unless the material would be italicized for some other reason.
Per the verifiability policy, direct quotations must be accompanied by an inline citation from a reliable source that supports the material. This is especially important in articles that are about or contain material about living or recently deceased people (BLPs).
Original wording
Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text must be faithfully reproduced. This is referred to as the principle of minimal change. Where there is good reason to change the wording, bracket the changed text; for example, "Ocyrhoe told him his fate" might be quoted as "Ocyrhoe told [her father] his fate". If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with {{sic}}
(producing [sic] ) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically). When applied to linked titles appearing between <ref>...</ref>
tags, title parameters in citation templates, or similar text that is linked, the syntax of the template may be adjusted to {{sic|nolink=y}}
(producing [sic] in the resulting linked text). For the sake of accuracy and indexing, the titles of referenced sources should not be corrected for spelling, but minor typographic adjustments (like changing curly quotes to straight) may be made silently. Inline citations in the quoted text, to sources not used in the Wikipedia article, should be silently removed.
Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted text. Legitimate omissions include extraneous, irrelevant, or parenthetical words, and unintelligible speech (umm and hmm), but do not omit text where doing so would remove important context or alter the meaning of the text. Vulgarities and obscenities should be shown exactly as they appear in the quoted source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words (G-d d--m it!), but if the text being quoted itself does so, copy the text verbatim and use {{sic}}
to indicate that the text is quoted as shown in the source.
In direct quotations, retain dialectal and archaic spellings, including capitalization (but not archaic glyphs and ligatures, as detailed below in § Typographic conformity).
Point of view
Quotation should be used, with attribution, to present emotive opinions that cannot be expressed in Wikipedia's own voice, but never to present cultural norms as simply opinional:
- Acceptable: Siskel and Ebert called the film "unforgettable".
- Unacceptable: The site is considered "sacred" by the religion's scriptures.
Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words such as supposedly or so-called, might be inferred.
- Permissible: Siskel and Ebert called the film interesting.
- Unnecessary and may imply doubt: Siskel and Ebert called the film "interesting".
- Should be quoted: Siskel and Ebert called the film "interesting but heart-wrenching".
Typographic conformity
A quotation is not a facsimile and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud, for example:
- Normalize dashes and hyphens: see § Dashes. Use the style chosen for the article: unspaced em dash or spaced en dash.
- Convert apostrophes and quotation marks to Wikipedia's style:
- These should be straight, not curly or slanted. See § Quotation marks.
- When quoting a quotation that itself contains a quotation, alternate between using double and single quotes for each quotation. See § For a quotation within a quotation for details.
- When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language. If there are multiple styles for a language, the one used by the Wikipedia for that language is preferred unless the punctuation itself is under discussion.
- The cynical response "L'auteur aurait dû demander : « à quoi sert-il d'écrire ceci ? » mais ne l'a pas fait" was all he wrote.
- Remove spaces before punctuation such as periods and colons.
- Generally preserve bold and italics Underlining, spac ing within words, colors, ALL CAPS, small caps, etc. should generally be normalized to plain text. If it clearly indicates emphasis, use italic emphasis (
{{em}}
) or, in an already-italic passage, boldface (with{{strong}}
). For titles of books, articles, poems, and so forth, use italics or quotation marks following the guidance for titles. Italics can also be added to mark up non-English terms (with the{{lang}}
template), for an organism's scientific name, and to indicate a words-as-words usage.
, but most other styling should be altered. - Expand an abbreviation (not already used in the content before the quotation) as a square-bracketed change, or explain it using
{{abbr}}
. - Normalize archaic glyphs and ligatures in English that are unnecessary to the meaning. Examples include æ→ae, œ→oe, ſ→s, and þ→the.
However, national varieties should not be changed, as these may involve changes in vocabulary. For example, a quotation from a British source should retain British spelling, even in an article that otherwise uses American spelling. should not be reformatted.
Numbers also usuallyDirect quotation should not be used to preserve the formatting preferred by an external publisher (especially when the material would otherwise be unchanged), as this tends to have the effect of scare-quoting:
- Acceptable: The animal is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
- Unacceptable: The animal is listed as "Endangered" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Italics can be used to mark a particular usage as a term of art (a case of "words as words"), especially when it is unfamiliar or should not be reworded by a non-expert:
- Permissible: The animal is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
When quoting a complete sentence, it is usually recommended to keep the first word capitalized. However, if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (for example, with an introduction such as "X said that"), the original capital letter may be lower-cased.
- LaVesque's report stated: "The equipment was selected for its low price. This is the primary reason for criticism of the program."
- LaVesque's report said that "the equipment was selected for its low price".
- The program was criticized primarily because "the equipment was selected for its low price", according to LaVesque.
It is normally unnecessary to explicitly note changes in capitalization. However, for more precision, the altered letter may be put inside square brackets: "The" → "[t]he".
- The program was criticized primarily because "[t]he equipment was selected for its low price", according to LaVesque.
Attribution
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. The source must be named in article text if the quotation is an opinion characterizing it in a biased manner.
. When attributing a quotation, avoidQuotations within quotations
See § For a quotation within a quotation.
Linking
Be conservative when linking within quotations; link only to targets that correspond to the meaning clearly intended by the quote's author. Where possible, link from text outside of the quotation instead – either before it or soon after. (If quoting hypertext, add an editorial note, [link in original] or [link added], as appropriate, to avoid ambiguity as to whether the link was made by the original author.)
Block quotations
Format a long quote (more than about forty words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, indented on both sides. Block quotations should be enclosed in {{blockquote}}
.
Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid large, decorative quotation marks; those provided by the {{cquote}}
template have been disabled in mainspace). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged.
Use {{blockquote}}
and so on only for actual quotations; indentation for other purposes is done differently.
It is conventional to precede a block quotation with an introductory sentence (or sentence fragment) and append the source citation to that line. Alternatively, the {{blockquote}}
template provides parameters for attribution and citation which will appear below the quotation. This below-quotation attribution style is intended for famous quotations and is unusual in articles because it may strike an inappropriate tone. A quotation with no cited source should be flagged with {{quote without source}}
, or deleted.
Line breaks and indentation inside a {{blockquote}}
or <blockquote>
are generally ignored; use <poem>
or {{poem quote}}
for poetry, lyrics, and similar material:
{{blockquote|<poem>
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
</poem>}}
This gives:
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
Or quote such material inline, with line breaks indicated by {{nbsp}}/
, and paragraph or stanza breaks by {{nbsp}}//
.
Pull quotes do not belong in Wikipedia articles. These are the news and magazine style of "pulling" material already in the article to reuse it in attention-grabbing decorative quotations. This unencyclopedic approach is a form of editorializing, produces out-of-context and undue emphasis, and may lead the reader to conclusions not supported in the material.
Non-English quotations
Quotations from non-English language sources should appear with a translation into English, preferably a modern one. Quotations that are translations should be explicitly distinguished from those that are not. Indicate the original source of a translation (if it is available, and not first published within Wikipedia), and the original language (if that is not clear from the context).
If the original, untranslated text is available, provide a reference for it or include it, as appropriate.
When editors themselves translate text into English, care must always be taken to include the original text, in italics (except for non-Latin-based writing systems, and best done with the {{lang}}
template which both italicizes as appropriate and provides language metadata); and to use actual and (if at all possible) common English words in the translation. Unless you are certain of your competency to translate something, see Wikipedia:Translation for assistance.
Punctuation
Apostrophes
- Use straight apostrophes ('), not curly apostrophes (’). Do not use accent marks or backticks (`) as apostrophes.
- Templates such as
{{'}}
and{{'s}}
are helpful when an apostrophe (or single quote) appears at the beginning or end of text in italics or bold, because italics and bold are themselves indicated by sequences of single quotes. Example: Dynasty's first season (markup:''Dynasty''{{'s}} first season
). - Letters resembling apostrophes, such as the ʻokina ( ʻ – markup:
{{okina}}
), saltillo ( ꞌ – markup:{{saltillo}}
), Hebrew ayin or Arabic ʿayn ( ʽ – markup:{{ayin}}
) and Arabic hamza ( ʼ – markup:{{hamza}}
), should be represented by those templates or by their Unicode values.- Templates cannot be used in article titles; if necessary, use the corresponding Unicode character directly. Per WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS, also make a redirect from the ASCII form to aid searches. Forms without apostrophe-like characters are sometimes preferred by WP:COMMONNAME (e.g. Hawaii but not Kealiʻi Reichel).
- For Wade–Giles romanizations of Mandarin Chinese, use
{{wg-apos}}
. - For languages with ejective consonants and the like, use
{{hamza}}
. - For the Cyrillic soft sign, when indicated at all, use
{{softsign}}
or{{hamza}}
. - For usage of the possessive apostrophe, see § Possessives.
- For further treatment of apostrophe usage (possessive, elision, formation of certain plurals, non-English language issues) see the article Apostrophe.
Quotation marks
In the material below, the term quotation includes conventional uses of quotation marks such as for titles of songs, chapters, episodes, and so on. Quotation marks are also used in other contexts, such as in cultivar names.
Quotation characters
- Use "straight" quotation marks, not “curly” ones. (For single-apostrophe quotes: 'straight', not ‘curly’.)
- Do not use accent marks, backticks (`text´), low-high („ “) or guillemet (« ») marks as quotation marks (except when such marks are internal to quoted non-English text – see § Typographic conformity). The symbols ′ and ″ seen in edit window dropdowns are prime and double prime: these are used to designate units of angular measurement, and not as apostrophes or quote marks.
- Quotation marks and apostrophes in imported material should be changed if necessary to comply with the above.
Double or single
Most quotations take double quotation marks (Bob said: "Jim ate the apple."). Exceptions:
- Plant cultivars take single quotation marks (Malus domestica 'Golden Delicious'; see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)).
- Glosses that translate or define unfamiliar terms take single quotes; simple glosses require no comma before the definition (Turkic qazaq 'freebooter' is the root of Cossack; republic comes from Latin res publica, loosely meaning 'public affair'.). The {{Gloss}} template can be used for this; e.g.
{{lang|es|casa}}
{{gloss|house}}
yields: casa 'house'.
For a quotation within a quotation
Use single quotes:
- Darwin wrote in his introduction that "the maxim 'de minimis lex non curat' does not apply to science".
For deeper nesting, alternate between single and double quotes:
- He said, "That book asserts, 'Confucius said "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."'"
For quote marks in immediate succession, add a sliver of space by using {{" '}}, {{' "}}, or (as in the example just given) {{" ' "}}:
- He announced, "The answer was 'Yes!'" Markup:
He announced, "The answer was 'Yes!{{' "}}
- He announced, "The answer was 'Yes!'" (simply jamming things together looks awful in most fonts)
- He announced, "The answer was 'Yes!' " (a regular space is too much)
Article openings
In the bolded text typically appearing at the opening of an article:
- Any quotation marks that are part of the title should be in bold just like the rest of the title.
- From "A" Is for Alibi: "A" Is for Alibi is a mystery novel ...
- Quotation marks not part of the article title should not be bolded.
- From Jabberwocky: "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem ...
- From Babe Ruth: George Herman "Babe" Ruth was an American baseball player ...
Punctuation before quotations
If a non-quoted but otherwise identical construction would work grammatically without a comma, using a comma before a quotation embedded within a sentence is optional:
- The report stated "There was a 45% reduction in transmission rate." (Cf. the non-quotation The report stated there was a 45% reduction in transmission rate.)
- The report stated, "There was a 45% reduction in transmission rate."
The comma-free approach is often used with partial quotations:
- The report observed "a 45% reduction in transmission rate".
A comma is required when it would be present in the same construction if none of the material were a quotation:
- In Margaret Mead's view, "we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities" to enrich our culture.
Do not insert a comma if it would confuse or alter the meaning:
- Caitlyn Jenner expressed concerns about children "who are coming to terms with being true to who they are". (Accurate quote of a statement about some children – specifically those children "who are coming to terms ...")
- Caitlyn Jenner expressed concerns about children, "who are coming to terms with being true to who they are". (Changes the meaning to imply Jenner was expressing concern about all children, while separately observing that children, in general, "are coming to terms ...")
It is clearer to use a colon to introduce a quotation if it forms a complete sentence, and this should always be done for multi-sentence quotations:
- The report stated: "There was a 45% reduction in transmission rate."
- In a letter to his son, Albert Einstein wrote: "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
No additional punctuation is necessary for an explicit words-as-words scenario:
- The message was unintelligible except for the fragments "help soon" and "how much longer before".
Names and titles
Quotation marks should be used for the following names and titles:
- Articles and chapters (books and periodicals italicized)
- Short stories (books and periodicals italicized)
- Sections of musical pieces (pieces italicized)
- Individual strips from comics and webcomics (comics italicized)
- Poems (long or epic poems italicized)
- Songs (albums, song cycles, operas, operettas, and oratorios italicized)
- Individual episodes of television and radio series and serials (series title italicized)
Correct: The Beatles wrote "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Do not use quotation marks or italics for:
- Ancient writings
- Concert tours
- Locations
- Myths and epics
- Prayers
Many, but not all, of the above items should also be in title case.
Punctuation inside or outside
Use the logical quotation style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.
- Correct: Did Darla say, "Here I am"? (question mark applies to whole sentence)
- Incorrect: Did Darla say, "Here I am?" (incorrect to apply the question mark to the quotation)
- Correct: Darla said, "Where am I?" (question mark applies to quoted material only)
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.
- Miller wanted, he said, "to create something timeless".
- Miller said: "I wanted to create something timeless."
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause that should be preceded by a comma, omit the full stop (period), and do not replace it with a comma inside the quotation. Other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation mark, may be retained.
- Livingston then said, "It is done", and turned to the people.
- Livingston then exclaimed, "It is done!", and turned to the people.
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, use a comma outside the quotation mark instead of a full stop inside it, but retain any other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark.
- "There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet", said Kennedy.
- By asking "Who are you?", da Gama prompts Adamastor to tell his story.
Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation.
- Correct: "I began to change, opening the way to confidence and courage", said Turner.
- Correct: "I began to change," said Turner, "opening the way to confidence and courage."
- Correct: "I began to change, opening the way", said Turner, "to confidence and courage."
- Incorrect: "I began to change, opening the way," said Turner, "to confidence and courage."
Quotation marks and external links
External links to article titles should have the title in quotes inside the link. The CS1 and CS2 citation templates do this automatically, and untemplated references should do the same.
- Correct: Kiefer, Francine (May 29, 1998). "Clinton: The Early Years". The Christian Science Monitor. (Using {{cite news}})
- Correct: Kiefer, Francine (May 29, 1998). "Clinton: The Early Years". The Christian Science Monitor. (Untemplated)
- Incorrect: Kiefer, Francine (May 29, 1998). "Clinton: The Early Years". The Christian Science Monitor. (Untemplated)
Quotation marks and internal links
Internal links (wikilinks) accompanied by quotation marks should usually have the quotes outside the link. This applies to titles of works in quotation marks (songs, episodes, etc.)
- Correct: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By". (Using
"[[ ]]"
.) - Incorrect: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By". (Using
[[" "]]
.)
However, quotation marks are needed inside wikilinks when the quotation mark is part of the link, or where the linked display text includes quotation marks indicating slang, nicknames, common names, or similar usage.
- Correct: The term soccer comes from Oxford "-er" slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875....
- Correct: A Cockney accent drops the "r" after a vowel.
- Correct: The Proletarian Sports Society "Dynamo" was established in Moscow in 1923.
- Correct: President Suharto's "New Order" administration received U.S. support for its economic policies.
- Correct: Japan's "Lost Decades" began in 1991.
Brackets and parentheses
This section applies to both round brackets ( ), often called parentheses, and square brackets [ ].
If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here). However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should usually be preceded by a space. This may not be the case if it is preceded by an opening quotation mark, another opening bracket, or a portion of a word:
- He rose to address the meeting: "(Ahem) ... Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!"
- Only the royal characters in the play ([Prince] Hamlet and his family) habitually speak in blank verse.
- We journeyed on the Inter[continental].
- Most people are right-handed. (Some people are left-handed, but that does not make right-handed people "better" than left-handed people.)
There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets.
Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite:
- Avoid: Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885 – 1919) (also known as Matvii Hryhoriiv) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
- Better: Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885 – 1919; also known as Matvii Hryhoriiv) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader.
- Better: Nikifor Grigoriev (c. 1885 – 1919) was a Ukrainian insurgent leader. He was also known as Matvii Hryhoriiv.
Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning. They serve three main purposes:
- To clarify: She attended [secondary] school, where this was the intended meaning, but the type of school was unstated in the original sentence.
- To reduce the size of a quotation: X contains Y, and under certain circumstances, X may contain Z as well may be reduced to X contains Y [and sometimes Z]. When an ellipsis (...) is used to indicate that material is removed from a direct quotation, it should not normally be bracketed.
- To make the grammar work: Referring to someone's statement "I hate to do laundry", one could properly write She "hate[s] to do laundry".
If a sentence includes subsidiary material enclosed in square or round brackets, it must still carry terminal punctuation after those brackets, regardless of any punctuation within the brackets.
However, if the entire sentence is within brackets, the closing punctuation falls within the brackets. (This sentence is an example.)
Brackets and linking
Square brackets inside of links must be escaped:
He said, "[[John Doe|John [Doe]]] answered." |
He said, "John [Doe] answered." |
He said, "[[John Doe|John {{bracket|Doe}}]] answered." |
He said, "John [Doe] answered." |
[https://example.com On the first day [etc.]] |
|
[https://example.com On the first day {{bracket|etc.}}] |
The <nowiki>
markup can also be used: <nowiki>[Doe]</nowiki>
or <nowiki>[etc.]</nowiki>
.
If a URL itself contains square brackets, the wiki-text should use the URL-encoded form https://example.com/foo.php?query=%5Bxxx%5Dyyy
, rather than ...query=[xxx]yyy
. This will avoid truncation of the link after xxx
.
Ellipses
Use an ellipsis (plural ellipses) if material is omitted in the course of a quotation, unless square brackets are used to gloss the quotation .
- Wikipedia's style for an ellipsis is three unspaced dots (
...
); do not use the precomposed ellipsis character (…
) or three dots separated by spaces (. . .
) - Generally, use a non-breaking space before an ellipsis, and a regular space after it:
"Alpha, Bravo,{{nbsp}}... Zulu"
- But where an ellipsis is immediately followed by any of
. ? ! : ; , ) ] }
or by a closing quotation mark (single or double), use a non-breaking space before the ellipsis, and no space after it:Jones wrote: "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully{{nbsp}}...".
"But what of the other cities? London, Paris{{nbsp}}...?"
(Place terminal punctuation after an ellipsis only if it is textually important, as is often the case with exclamation marks and question marks but rarely with periods.)
- Or, if the ellipsis immediately follows a quotation mark, use no space before the ellipsis, and a non-breaking space after it:
He continued to pursue Smith ("...{{nbsp}}to the ends of the earth", he had sworn) until his own death.
- But where an ellipsis is immediately followed by any of
- Pause or suspension of speech
- Three dots are occasionally used to represent a pause in or suspense of speech, in which case the punctuation is retained in its original form: Virginia's startled reply was "Could he ...? No, I can't believe it!". When it indicates an incomplete word, no space is used between the word fragment(s) and the ellipsis: The garbled transmission ended with "We are stranded near San L...o", interpreted as a reference to either San Leandro or San Lorenzo.
- With square brackets
- Square brackets may be placed around an ellipsis that indicates omitted text to distinguish it from an ellipsis that is part of the quoted text: She retorted: "How do I feel? How do you think I ... This is too much! [...] Take me home!". In this example, the first ellipsis is part of the quoted text and the second ellipsis (in square brackets) indicates omitted text.
Commas
-
A pair of commas can bracket an appositive, relative clause, or parenthetical phrase (as can brackets or dashes, though with greater interruption of the sentence). For example:
Correct: John Smith, Janet Cooper's son, is a well-known playwright. Correct: Janet Cooper's son John Smith is a well-known playwright. (when Janet has multiple sons) Correct: Janet Cooper's son, John Smith, is a well-known playwright. (when Janet has only one son) Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma:
Incorrect: The newest member, John Smith was blunt. Correct: Blunt comments came from the newest member, John Smith. Correct: The newest member, John Smith – a retired teacher – was blunt. -
Don't let other punctuation distract you from the need for a comma, especially when the comma collides with a bracket or parenthesis:
Correct: Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu), survived for a few months. Incorrect: Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu) survived for a few months. -
Modern writing uses fewer commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed.
Clear: Schubert's heroes included Mozart, Beethoven, and Joseph and Michael Haydn. Awkward: Mozart was, along with the Haydns, both Joseph and Michael, and also Beethoven, one of Schubert's heroes. -
In geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by terminal punctuation or a closing parenthesis. The last element is treated as parenthetical.
Correct: He traveled through North Carolina before staying in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the night. Incorrect: He traveled through North Carolina before staying in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the night. Also include commas when the geographical element is used as a disambiguator:
Correct: Hantratty received a PhD from the University of California, Irvine, in 1977. Incorrect: Hantratty received a PhD from the University of California, Irvine in 1977. -
Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation. The last element is treated as parenthetical.
Correct: He set October 1, 2011, as the deadline for Patterson to meet his demands. Incorrect: He set October 1, 2011 as the deadline for Patterson to meet his demands. -
Place quotation marks by following § Punctuation inside or outside. This is known as "logical quotation".
Correct: She said, "The weather changes too often", and made other complaints. Incorrect: She said, "The weather changes too often," and made other complaints. - A comma may be included before a quotation embedded within a sentence .
Serial commas
A serial comma (sometimes also known as an Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction (and, or, nor) in a list of three or more items.
Editors may use either convention so long as each article is internally consistent. Serial commas are more helpful when article text is complex, such as a list with multi-word items (especially if one contains its own "and") or a series of probably unfamiliar terms.
However, there are cases in which either omitting or including the serial comma results in ambiguity:
In such cases of ambiguity, clarify one of four ways:
- Add or remove the serial comma.
- Use separate sentences, bullet lists, or some other structural change to clarify.
- Recast the sentence ("friends" case):
- To list two people: The author thanked her friends Sinéad O'Connor and Bob Marley.
- Clearer: The author thanked two friends – Sinéad O'Connor and Bob Marley.
- To list several people:
- The author thanked Sinéad O'Connor, Bob Marley and her friends or
- The author thanked Sinéad O'Connor, Bob Marley, and her friends.
- But not: The author thanked Bob Marley, Sinéad O'Connor[,] and her friends – introduces ambiguity about her.
- To list two people: The author thanked her friends Sinéad O'Connor and Bob Marley.
- Recast the sentence ("friend" case):
- To list two people: The author thanked Bob Marley and her friend, Sinéad O'Connor.
- Or be more specific when possible (the commas here set off non-restrictive appositives): The author thanked her childhood friend, Sinéad O'Connor, and her mentor, Bob Marley.
- To list three people: The author thanked Bob Marley, Sinéad O'Connor, and a friend.
- Clarity with gender-specific terms such as mother can be tricky; The author thanked her mother, Kim Thayil, and Sinéad O'Connor is unclear because readers may not know Kim Thayil is male and wouldn't be the same person as the mother.
- Clearer: The author thanked Kim Thayil, Sinéad O'Connor, and her own mother or The author thanked her mother and musicians Kim Thayil and Sinéad O'Connor.
- To list two people: The author thanked Bob Marley and her friend, Sinéad O'Connor.
Colons
A colon (:) introduces something that demonstrates, explains, or modifies what has come before, or is a list of items that has just been introduced. The items in such a list may be separated by commas, or if they are more complex and perhaps themselves contain commas, the items should be separated by semicolons or arranged in a bulleted list.
A colon may also be used to introduce direct speech enclosed within quotation marks.
In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name. When a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles.
Except in technical usage (a 3:1 ratio), no sentence should contain multiple colons, no space should precede a colon, and a space (but never a hyphen or dash) should follow the colon.
Semicolons
A semicolon (;) is sometimes an alternative to a full stop (period), enabling related material to be kept in the same sentence; it marks a more decisive division in a sentence than a comma. If the semicolon separates clauses, normally each clause must be independent (meaning that it could stand on its own as a sentence). In many cases, only a comma or only a semicolon will be correct in a given sentence.
Correct: | Though he had been here before, I did not recognize him. |
Incorrect: | Though he had been here before; I did not recognize him. |
Above, "Though he had been here before" cannot stand on its own as a sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause.
Correct: | Oranges are an acidic fruit; bananas are classified as alkaline. |
Incorrect: | Oranges are an acidic fruit, bananas are classified as alkaline. |
This incorrect use of a comma between two independent clauses is known as a comma splice; however, in certain kinds of cases, a comma may be used where a semicolon would seem to be called for:
Accepted: | "Life is short, art is long." (two brief clauses in an aphorism; see Ars longa, vita brevis) |
Accepted: | "I have studied it, you have not." (reporting brisk conversation, such as this reply of Newton's) |
A sentence may contain several semicolons, especially when the clauses are parallel in construction and meaning; multiple unrelated semicolons are often signs that the sentence should be divided into shorter sentences or otherwise refashioned.
Unwieldy: | Oranges are an acidic fruit; bananas are classified as alkaline; pears are close to neutral; these distinctions are rarely discussed. |
Better: | Oranges are an acidic fruit, bananas are alkaline, and pears are close to neutral; these distinctions are rarely discussed. |
Semicolons are used in addition to commas to separate items in a listing, when commas alone would result in confusion.
Confusing: | Sales offices are located in Boston, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California, Singapore, and Millbank, London, England. |
Clear: | Sales offices are located in Boston, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Singapore; and Millbank, London, England. |
Semicolon before "however"
The meaning of a sentence containing a trailing clause that starts with the word however depends on the punctuation preceding that word. A common error is to use the wrong punctuation, thereby changing the meaning to one not intended.
When the word however is an adverb meaning "nevertheless", it should be preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma. Example:
It was obvious they could not convert these people; however, they tried. | |
Meaning: | It was obvious they could not convert these people; nevertheless, they tried. |
When the word however is a conjunction meaning "in whatever manner", or "regardless of how", it may be preceded by a comma but not by a semicolon, and should not be followed by punctuation. Example:
It was obvious they could not convert these people, however they tried. | |
Meaning: | It was obvious they could not convert these people, regardless of how they tried. |
In the first case, the clause that starts with "however" cannot be swapped with the first clause; in the second case this can be done without change of meaning:
However they tried, it was obvious they could not convert these people. | |
Meaning: | Regardless of how they tried, it was obvious they could not convert these people. |
If the two clauses cannot be swapped, a semicolon is required.
A sentence or clause can also contain the word however in the middle, if it is an adverb meaning "although" that could have been placed at the beginning but does not start a new clause in mid-sentence. In this use, the word may be enclosed between commas. Example:
He did not know, however, that the venue had been changed at the last minute. | |
Meaning: | However, he did not know that the venue had been changed at the last minute. |
Hyphens
Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses: