Wikivoyage:Manual of style

Our manual of style is a collection of rules of thumb and guidelines for giving Wikivoyage a consistent look and feel. Most of these rules have exceptions, but to put together a good reference work collaboratively, it's best to follow the rules unless they're quite inappropriate for a particular situation.

The manual is broken up into different pages so that this page is not overloaded with extraneous text. It makes it easier to find and update individual rules or concepts if they're on their own pages; and it's easier for people to link to particular rules from article talk pages.

If all this stuff makes your head swim, and you don't want to bother with it, by all means plunge forward and just start sharing your knowledge. Other Wikivoyagers will come through and bring your contributions more into line with the style guide.

If you have a question about the specifics of the manual, or want to see it changed/amended/clarified, use the talk page for the section in question. Requests for comment are issues currently being discussed.

Structural style

This section of the manual is for rules about the structure of Wikivoyage as a whole.

Formatting style

These rules are about the formatting of individual articles—how we take raw information and put it in a format that's easily usable by travellers.

Article layout

Formatting content

  • Accessibility – how to make content accessible to people who have a disability.
  • Avoid HTML – avoiding HTML formatting.
  • Avoid long lists – lists of items should usually follow the 7±2 rule.
  • Geocoding – adding latitude and longitude to destination articles.
  • Information boxes – when, how and when not to use information boxes.
  • Section headers – formatting guidelines for the section headers.
  • Wiki markup – how to use the MediaWiki markup to present information.

Links

Listings

  • Listings – for including business and attraction listings.
  • One-liner listings – for regions, districts, cities, Go next sections, and other sections as appropriate.

Writing style

This set of rules describes how to write words, sentences, and paragraphs.

See also