TWG Article Style Guide

Images | Spelling & Capitalization | Formatting | Basic HTML Tags

Images

Images are often only used in the blurb, but will occasionally be used in the article itself. Most images will be referenced, that is you will link to the image source on another site so we aren’t hosting the image.

If it's an image that should be hosted, talk to Spriggan about FTPing it to the server.

Don't reference IMDB images because they won't show up consistently for users.

Spelling and Capitalization

Speculative fiction aficionados have their own jargon, but there are often spelling inconsistencies. While we don’t claim to be the authorities on sf jargon, the following consists of the spelling, capitalization, and usage followed by TWG and articles posted therein.

Correct Spelling

email

roleplay

Capitalization

Internet

Web

game master

Dungeon Master

Acronyms

GM (for ‘game master’)

RPG (as in ‘roleplaying game’ or ‘roleplaying’)

FPS (first-person shooter)

RTS (real-time strategy)

MMOG

MMORPG

PHB (Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook)

POV (point-of-view)

sf (for 'speculative fiction' instead of sci-fi or fantasy as a general term)

Version Names

D&D3e (Dungeons and Dragons, Third Edition)
D&D3.5 (Dungeons and Dragons v.3.5)
GURPS3e
GURPS4e
MtG (Magic); expansions for Magic are by name (Kamigawa, Apocalypse) except the "editions" which are then MtG7e, etc.
WFRP2

Abbreviations

Using abbreviations of products is fine, and should be capitalized. However, the first instance of any term found in article should be unabbreviated. The exceptions to this would be "standard" abbreviations such as RPG, MMORPG, and Magic--with the abbreviation you will be using in the rest of the artcle in parenthesis directly following.

Formatting

Italicizing vs Quotes

The following are italicized:

The following use quotes:

Stressed Words

Italicize a stressed word. Don't use caps, bold, quotation marks, or underlining.

Sub-headings

Generally, sub-headings aren’t used a great deal in the articles, but when they are, their purpose is to separate out sections of a longer than usual article.

Length

Paragraphs should ideally be 150 words or less. Paragraphs longer than this should be split.

An article should ideally be 3000 words or less. If there is a natural break, articles longer than this should be split.

Article Title

When naming the title of an article use the complete name of the item you are reviewing. Don't italicize, don't use quotes, do not use abbreviations, do not add the name of the author.

Basic HTML Tags

There are a limited number of HTML tags that submitters should be familiar with. It’s also important to make sure to close tags, which avoids messing up the code on the rest of the page.

All HTML should be in lowercase, no uppercase tags

All line breaks (for example, < br >) are self closing and so are image tags.

If there's anything before the first paragraph, such as author, publisher, or director, those should be placed in a header tag, since they're headers.

Hierarchy is thusly:

< h1 >Header level 1 Time Wasters Guide only. (automated)
< h2 >Header level 2 Article/Review title when viewing the full article (automated)
< h3 >Header level 3 Reserved for the headline in TWG 4.0 (automated)
< h4>Header level 4 Titles in blurbs other than the headline (automated)
< h4 class="x" >Header level 4 Reserved for TWG 4.0 layout
< h5 class="persona" >Header level 5 Book authors, publishers, actors, ect.
< h5 class="label" >Header level 5 When you want to have labels/headers in your article/review to break up paragraphs
< h6 >Header level 6 When the author wants to add a "written by" or other statements like the Gibbs use to do (for example: Reviewed by Paul and Patrick Gibbs, 12/14/06, 4 stars out of 4)

< p >All paragraphs must be started with this tag, no self closing tags here (in other words, don't use < p/ >) < /p >

< em >italicized text< /em > instead of < i >

< strong >headings< /strong > instead of < b >

< img src=" " border="0" > links an image (without a border when it’s linked)

< a href=" " target="_blank" >to create a link that opens in a new browse < /a >

< div >pre-article text, usually referencing book publisher, date< /div >

Written by Nessa on September 20th, 2007