Guild:Style

This is a rough style guide for this wiki, and is definitely a work in progress! It’s maintained by Ben, who is currently the only active editor of the wiki, but should he ever successfully recruit someone else, it’ll help us maintain consistency.

Naming conventions

Pages

Where there’s a name conflict, use a parenthetical to distinguish pages from each other. Titles of Pratchett's books should have precedence, since they’re used more than the pages for podcasts. The wiki will automatically know what to do with italics in article titles (though not in links, but we usually hide them there anyway). For example:

• Unseen Academicals (podcast) - to distinguish the podcast from the novel Unseen Academicals
• Good Omens (TV series) - to distinguish the series from the novel Good Omens

Shortcuts

We make use of shortcut templates to make linking to frequently used articles faster and easier. This primarily includes books, podcasts and media adaptations of the books. They are generally initials or partial acronyms; see below for guidelines and where these are documented.

Book and Story shortcuts

The shortcuts for books and stories (mostly) match those used on the L-Space wiki (which aren’t explicitly documented). We have used a template to provide easy ways to use book titles in other contexts (e.g. podcast episode titles), and to link to external sources, like the L-Space wiki, Wikipedia, and perhaps other places in the future. See that page for instructions and documentation on how that works, as well as for the similar template used for short stories.

Book shortcuts are given precedence over others to preserve matching to the L-Space wiki. They can sometimes be as short as one letter, e.g. Mort (M), Pyramids (P), etc. Where book shortcuts would conflict with each other, the earlier-published book gets precedence. The later book gets a second letter added. e.g. Diggers is “D”, but Dodger is “DO”. Books with a numerical sequence include the number in the abbreviation, e.g. “SOD” (or “SOD1”) for The Science of Discworld, then “SOD2” for The Science of Discworld II: The Globe etc.

Abbreviations for books should be included in the relevant table on the main book pages: Discworld Books and Stories, Other Pratchett Books and Stories, and Books by Other Authors.

Podcast shortcuts

Shortcuts for podcasts are generally two- or three-letter acronyms of the show’s name, though we aim for “easy to guess and remember” over any strict rule. Thus Pratchat is “PC”, Desert Island Discworld is “DID”, The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is “MYF”, Oktarin is “OKT” etc. Where an obvious shortcut would conflict with a book, we append a “P” to the end, e.g. Unseen Academicals is “UAP”. This matches the parenthetical of the page title.

Abbreviations for podcasts should be included in the relevant table on the main Pratchett Podcasts page.

Other shortcuts

The main other use for shortcuts is for adaptations of Pratchett media. These generally use the same abbreviation as the source material, but with a suffix to indicate the kind of adaptation: TV for television series, F for feature or short films, VG for videogames, BG for board games (rarely needed) and RPG for roleplaying games. Examples include Discworld (DVG) and Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!? (D2VG), Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (HTV) and The Discworld Roleplaying Game (DRPG).

Podcast pages

These should include the following sections:

• The podcast infobox - see the documentation for this template.
• Publisher Description - the show’s description of itself, as found in the podcast’s RSS feed and thus in podcast directories. (May need to be updated from time to time.)
• Further Information - currently contains two subcategories:
  • Format - information about the structure, length and frequency of release of the show. Basically an attempt at describing what a listener should expect.
  • Trivia - other interesting information about the show, hosts etc. This should especially focus on how it compares to other Pratchett podcasts.
• Hosts - a dot point list of the hosts of the show, wiki-linked to an article about them, and ideally with a very brief description. This should include a note about how often they appear if they are not a regular host.
• Episodes - this section includes a table of episodes. For “Pratchett podcasts” (see above), this includes every episode. For others, it should include only episodes about Terry Pratchett and his works. The table is sortable, but the default order should be chronological, with the earliest episodes first. The table should include these columns:
  • “#”, shorthand for “episode number” - the sequential episode number. We try to use the podcast’s own numbering, but if they use season-based episode numbers, include this column to give an overall episode number. e.g. The third episode of Desert Island Discworld’s second season is the eighth episode overall.
  • “S” and “E”, shorthand for “season number” and “episode number” - the season and episode number, as given by the podcast. Only included for podcasts which use season numbering.
  • Episode Title - the title of the episode. Usually we leave out things like episode numbers and parentheticals which specify featured guests or books, but sometimes we just put in whatever the podcast uses without editing. Use your own judgement, asking what will be useful in sorting, and what will help a reader understand what the podcast or episode is like.
  • Book/Subject - a shortcut to the book or other entry on this wiki which is discussed, or otherwise a very brief description of the topic of the episode.
  • Guests - only included for podcasts which guests every episode.
  • Episode link - an external link to this specific episode, either on the podcast’s own website, or their primary podcast platform. (i.e. don’t link to Apple Podcasts or another directory; this includes Spotify and YouTube, unless the podcast is actually published on those platforms.) To keep this column narrow, use “Website” as the link text when linking to the show’s own website, or the name of the platform (e.g. “Acast”, “Libsyn”, “Simplecast” etc). In the case of a show (like Pratchat) which has separate posts for episodes and detailed episode notes, provide two links, “Episode” and “Notes”, separated by a semicolon.
  • DW#, shorthand for “Discworld number” - the sequential number of the book discussed, if any. Only used for podcasts which read the books out of order, or which frequently have episodes about other books or topics. This column’s header should have a footnote (see below) explaining its use; the standard text begins "Sort by this column to get episodes in the Discworld publication order. Non-Discworld books (and episodes about other topics) leave this column blank.” You can add to this if it’s useful, for example by adding prefixed numbers to represent other series. Pratchat, The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret and The Compleat Discography have the most of these, so use them as a guide. The main Pratchett examples are:
    • The Science books (S1, S2 etc)
    • The Bromeliad (B1 etc)
    • The Johnny books (J1 etc)
    • The Long Earth series (L1 etc).
• Footnotes - our equivalent of a references section. Should only include the special markup <references/>, which will automatically include anything added with <ref> tags in the rest of the article.

Book pages

Coming soon.

People pages

Coming soon.