Help:Style guidelines

ActuallyAutistic Wiki is very much a work in progress. The following guidelines are therefore subject to change and will likely evolve over time – as is the nature of such collaborative projects!

To maintain a cohesive wiki, please stick to the style guidelines where possible. Though don't let that put you off — feel free to just add and edit articles as you like, and other people will likely tidy up the formatting later on.

This guide will you a brief overview of the formatting options available. If you want to know more about how linking pages to other pages works, this guide has all the info.

Point of view

We especially encourage articles informed by lived experience, and recognise that "objectivity" doesn't mean reinforcing the outgroup's status quo.

It's also safe to assume the reader is autistic, although they may only recently have discovered this fact. They may not yet know all the terminology, but they're happy to follow the links to learn more. This wiki is primarily by autistic people, for autistic people, although others are welcome to contribute.

We especially encourage a neurodiversity-affirming approach that suggests all neurotypes are equally valid, while simultaneously acknowledging that being neurodivergent in a neuro-typical society can be disabling.

Page titles

Where possible, page titles should only have their first word capitalised. Like this, but Not Like This. The exception is if the page is about something that is usually capitalised, such as a book title or a name.

Page titles should also be singular, not plural, where it makes sense to do so. For example, Sense instead of Senses.

Bold and italic text

You can make text bold with

'''three apostrophes'''

or italic with

''two apostrophes''.

The more encyclopedic-oriented pages should start off with a brief description or definition of the main subject. Try to incorporate the page title, or relevant parts of it, in a short introductory paragraph, and format the first instance of the main subject as bold text. For example, the page on Autism could start off with:

Autism is a neurotype ...

Throughout a page it would be recommended to use italic text instead of bold text whenever you want to highlight and emphasise a single word or a short passage of text. This reduces distractability and improves the overall reading flow.

Sections and subsections

For longer pages it is often a good idea to use multiple sections to separate the text into different, visually distinct parts. It improves both readability as well as skimmability. You're currently reading the section titled Sections and subsections.

A section can be added by typing

== Title of the section ==

If you get the feeling that a single section might contain too much text, try thinking about moving parts of it to another new section entirely, or split the section into multiple smaller subsections by using three equal signs:

=== Title of the subsection ===

It will look like this:

Subsection 1

I am a subsection.

Subsection 2

I am another subsection.

The first few sentences or paragraphs of a page should not be contained under a section. Only add sections after the initial few introductory paragraphs.

Sections and subsections are automatically added to the table of contents at the top of a page. Such a table will be automatically generated should a page contain a large enough number of sections.

References

To add a reference, type

<ref>[http://www.example.com/ An Example Webpage]</ref>

where http://www.example.com/ is a link to a webpage, and An Example Webpage is its title. This will result in a small number superscript where you typed, and the link appearing at the bottom of the page, like this.

Comments

Someday we might use the wiki's talk pages, but for now we're having editorial discussions in the pages themselves. Make your comments easy to distinguish from the rest of the text by using

{{Comment|Your comment text}}

It will then show up like this:

Your comment text

Feel free to add four tildes ~~~~ at the end of your comment; this will display your username along with a timestamp:

You don't have to sign your comments though if you'd rather stay anonymous! :)

--Fochti (talk) 12:46, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that using ~~~~ while you're logged out, or if you don't have an account to begin with, will publicly display your current IP address instead.

Content notes

You can add content notes at the top of a page or a section to notify readers about certain things before they read the actual text.

Content warning

Sometimes a piece of text or even an entire page can be uncomfortable to read or even triggering for people.

If you type {{Warning}} it will show up as

Content warning: difficult topics. This might get uncomfortable. Remember you always have the option to stop reading if it gets overwhelming.

You can also be more specific:

If you type {{Warning|content=Topic1, Topic2}} it will show up as

Content warning: Topic1, Topic2. This might get uncomfortable. Remember you always have the option to stop reading if it gets overwhelming.

Stub pages and sections

A stub is a page or a section of a page that is either very rough and unfinished or even completely empty, serving as a mere placeholder to be filled in later.

If you type {{Stub}} it will show up as

This page or section is a stub. Perhaps you can help add something to it? 😊

Redundancy and duplicates

Sometimes pages will be created and filled with content that already exists somewhere else.

If you type {{Redundant}} it will show up as

This page might be redundant since a similar page already exists. The contents may need to be merged.

If you type {{Redundant|page=[[Pagename]]}} it will show up as

This page might be redundant since Pagename already exists. The contents may need to be merged.