Help:Standards and Formatting (DnD Guideline)

From D&D Wiki

The following are guidelines based on general observations from official WotC D&D products.

For guidance outside of WotC books or this article, a good rule of thumb is Wikipedia's List of Guidelines.

Contents 1 Which style to use, or Set Your Spell Checkers to KILL! 2 When to Italicize 3 When to Capitalize 4 Common Misspellings 5 Commonly Used Special Characters 6 Typical Phrases and Sentence Structure 7 Miscellaneous 8 See Also 9 Templates 10 Preloads

[edit] Which style to use, or Set Your Spell Checkers to KILL!

The language used on D&D Wiki is U.S. English. The only exception to this is proper nouns that are spelled in a way to reflect in-game culture. This is not meant to alienate anyone, but is taking standards set forth by WoTC.

Some examples of U.S. English vs. U.K. English: favorite instead of favourite, maneuver instead of manoeuvre, -ize instead of -ise, or aluminum instead of aluminium.

For the Non-Americans who wish to participate and adhere to standards, web browsers like Firefox 2.0 have built in spell check with the ability to install dictionaries for U.S. English.

[edit] When to Italicize

Spells, powers, spell-like abilities, and psi-like abilities, such as greater teleport, should be italicized. Supernatural and extraordinary abilities should not be italicized, even if they mimic a spell of the same name, such as a balor's true seeing ability.

Names of magic and psionic items should be italicized, such as ring of wizardry II, and potion of bear's endurance. Nonmagical and nonpsionic items made out of special materials, such as adamantine breastplate should not be italicized.

Sourcebook names should be italicized (Dragon Magic).

[edit] When to Capitalize

The following should always be capitalized:

• Ability scores (Strength, Constitution, and Wis)
• Skills (Spot), but not the subset of skills within the Craft, Knowledge, Perform, Profession skills [Craft (weaponsmithing), Knowledge (arcana), Perform (carnal acts), Profession (the oldest one)]
• Feats (Combat Reflexes)
• Salient Divine abilities (Divine Creation)
• Special ability markers (Ex, Sp, Ps, and Su)
• Saves (Fortitude save, Reflex save, and Will save)
• "Armor Class"
• "Difficulty Class"
• "Hit Dice"
• Languages (Dwaven and Elven)
• Identifiers that occur inside older stat block formats that denote a creature's type and subtypes [Humanoid (Human, Shapechanger)]
• One of a kind artifacts (Eye of Vecna)
• Sizes (Small)
• Domains, but not the trailing word "domain" (War domain)
• Special abilities in the "Special" column of class tables¹ (Wild Shape, Uncanny Dodge, Improved Evasion)
• Planes (Material Plane)

The following should always follow the same rules for capitalization as if you were writing a term paper for class (i.e. the begining of a sentence, titles and headers, proper nouns, acronyms, etc...):

• Alignments (lawful good)
• Spells and powers (mage's disjunction and Mordenkainen’s disjunction)
• Special abilities (energy drain)
• Classes (rogue, monk, and barbarian)
• Magic and psionic items (tome of understanding) except for one of a kind artifacts
• Mundane items (monk's outfit)
• Races (dwarf and elves) and creatures (frost giant)
• Named bonuses (dodge, deflection, and circumstantial)
• Spell schools (necromancy) and subschools (healing)
• Power disciplines (clairsentience) and subdisciplines (scrying)
• Spell and power descriptors (force)
• Types (aberration) and subtypes (goblinoid) outside of older stat block formats and ones inside the new stat block format

The following should never be capitalized²:

• The unit indicating die size (10d6 and d20 System Reference Document)

This is an exception to the WotC format, in that WotC treats abilities in class tables as sentences and only the first word is capitalized. The decision for this exception was made by the D&D wiki community in the interest of aesthetics. A limitation of MediaWiki is that the first character of every page title (provided it's a letter) is capitalized.

[edit] Common Misspellings

Misspellings	Correct
lightening (illuminating)	lightning (electricity)
mithril (J. R. R. Tolkien)	mithral (Gygax)
rouge (a color)	rogue (a scoundrel)
diety (weight-lossy)	deity (god[dess])

[edit] Commonly Used Special Characters

Character	Code	Description
−	−	Minus sign
–	–	En dash: literally means "through" (19–20, 1st–9th)
—	—	Em dash: used to represent values of N/A or Nil (e.g. a non-ability "Con —")
×	×	Multiplication sign
→	→	Right arrow: used for the "Back to" footers
‘	‘	Left single quotation mark
’	’	Right single quotation mark; also used as an apostrophe
“	“	Left double quotation mark
”	”	Right double quotation mark

[edit] Typical Phrases and Sentence Structure

Class Feature (Sp): "At Xth level, you can use such-and-such as a spell-like ability Y times per day."

[edit] Miscellaneous

• "Affect" is a verb. (This only affects non-living matter.) "Effect" is a noun. (Living matter is not subject to this effect.)
• "Half-elf" and "half-orc" are not subtypes. Half-elves are humanoids with the elf subtype, and half-orcs are humanoids with the orc subtype.
• "Subdual" was a 3.0 term. In 3.5 it's now called "nonlethal."
• Magic/psionic weapons and armor names have the enhancement bonus listed first, such as a +1 flaming longsword. Other magic/psionic items with bonuses in their names list the bonus last, such as bracers of armor +6.
• Dark elves are typically referred to as "drow" or "dark elves," but not "drow elves." The same is true several other races: "gray dwarves" or "duergar," "deep gnomes" or "svirfneblin," "tallfellows" (not "tallfellow halflings"), "blues" (not "blue goblins").

[edit] See Also

Character Class Design Guidelines (DnD Other)

[edit] Templates

{{author}} - Used for tagging your creations as the originator.

{{Back to DnD Campaign Settings}}

{{Balance}} - Used for displaying the tested game balance for the article.

{{Copyright Disclaimer}} - allows one to use minor copyright things on a page. Please look into certain copyright issues and licenses before using this template.

{{Creature Table}} - Standard table to display a creature's stats.

{{ImageNeeded}} - Shows the world a picture is needed to accompany the article.

{{Merge}} - Marks articles as possibly needing to be merged.

{{inuse}} - The Inuse template message is placed at the top of a page you are actively editing for a short period of time. The tag is intended to inform people that someone is currently working on the article, thereby reducing edit conflicts. Please remember to remove the Inuse note as soon as you're finished editing.

[edit] Preloads

• DnD Campaign Setting Preload
• DnD Charter Mark Preload
• DnD Charter Spell Preload
• DnD Class Preload
• DnD Cleric Domain Preload
• DnD Creature Preload
• DnD Deity Preload
• DnD Dragon Preload
• DnD Environments Preload
• DnD Epic Power Preload
• DnD Epic Spell Preload
• DnD Equipment Preload
• DnD Feat Preload
• DnD Flaw Preload
• DnD Guideline Preload
• DnD Material Preload
• DnD Monk Fighting Style Preload
• DnD NPC Class Preload
• DnD NPC Preload
• DnD Optimized Character Build Preload
• DnD Power Preload
• DnD Prestige Class Preload
• DnD Race Preload
• DnD Racial Paragon Class Preload
• DnD Spell Preload
• DnD Template Preload
• DnD Variant Rule Preload
• DnD Weapon Preload

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This page contains standards originally proposed by Sledged

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