User:Wassupwestcoast/helpful

Wikipedia Pages

Rank	Page	Notes
1	Wikipedia:As of	The "as of" technique is an old method to deal with statements that date quickly.
2	Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms	try to avoid peacock terms that merely show off the subject of the article without imparting real information
3	Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes	Here are a few common ones you might try to avoid.
4	Wikipedia:Edit summary legend	This is a list of commonly used edit summary abbreviations
5	Wikipedia:Elements of Style improvement project	Many common English phrases are tedious or unclear
6	Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles	This is a body of advice on how to write an effective article
7	Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars	Occasionally, Wikipedians lose their minds and get into edit wars over the most petty things
8	Wikipedia:Manual of Style	The Manual of Style is a style guide that aims to make the encyclopedia easier to read
9	Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)	Wikipedia contains numerous articles on fictional worlds and elements from them
10	Wikipedia:The perfect article	A perfect Wikipedia article...
11	Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not	Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia
12	Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias	The Wikipedia project has a systemic bias that grows naturally out of the demographic of its contributors
13	Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors	The League of Copyeditors is a project to improve the style and formatting of Wikipedia articles
14	Wikipedia:Words to avoid	There is probably not a word that should never be used in a Wikipedia article
15	Wikipedia:Vandalism	Any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia
16	Wikipedia:Lead section	The lead section, lead, lede, or introduction of a Wikipedia article is the section before the first heading
17	Wikipedia:Template messages/General	Useful templates in article writing.
18	[Users]	Who's who.
19	Help:Table	Help on table creation
20	Help:Wikitext examples	Markup
21	Help:HTML in wikitext	More markup
22	Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines	Scientific guidelines
23	Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day

Grammar and layout checklist

• The lead needs to adequately summarize the content of the article.
• There should not be anything in the lead not mentioned in the rest of the article.
• Wikilinks should only be made if they are relevant to the context. Common words do not need wikilinking.
• A word only needs to be wikilinked once within each section.
• Only full dates or dates with a day and a month should be linked. The same applies to dates in the footnotes.
• External links only belong in the External links section.
• It is recommended not to specify the size of images. The sizes should be what readers have specified in their user preferences.
• Text should not be sandwiched between two adjacent images.
• Left-aligned images should not be placed at the start of sections.
• All fair-use images need a fair use rationale.
• Each statement that is likely to be challenged needs an inline citation.
• Book references need the author, publisher, publishing date and page number.
• Web references need the author, publisher, publishing date, access date, language (if not English) and format (if a PDF file).
• Web references need to be reliable and active. Blogs and personal sites are not reliable.
• Inline citations belong immediately after punctuation marks.
• Portal links belong in the "See also" section.
• "Further info" links belong at the top of sections.
• Lists should only be included if they can't be made into prose or their own article.
• Lists within prose should be avoided.
• En dashes are used for ranges, em dashes are used for punctuation.
• " " (non-breaking space) should be typed between numbers and units.
• Imperial measurements should be accompanied by the metric equivalent in brackets, and vice versa. If possible, use a convertion template, eg. {{convert|5|mi|km|0}}.
• Whole numbers under 11 should be spelled out as words, except when in lists, tables or infoboxes.
• Sentences should not start with a numeral. The sentence should be recast or the number should be spelled out.
• Usually, only the first word in a section heading needs a capital letter.
• Short sections and paragraphs are discouraged.
• Ampersands should not be used (except when in a name, eg., Marks & Spencer)
• "Past few years" has a different meaning to "last few years".
• "within" has a different meaning to "in".
• Initials in people's names need full-stops.
• Hyphens shouldn't be placed after -ly words, eg. widely-used word. (Except if the ly- word also describes the noun, eg. friendly-looking man)
• "century" doesn't have a capital.
• ", with" and ", while" are incorrect ways of joining two sentences. Semi-colons should be used instead.
• Sentences should not start with "it" or "there" when they do not stand for anything, eg. "There are two shops in the town.", "It is difficult to climb the mountain."
• "by" is sometimes an indicator of passive voice.
• The words "current", "recent" & "to date" should be avoided as they become outdated.
• Avoid using "not", eg. "songs previously not heard" → "songs previously unheard"
• Avoid contractions, such as can’t, he's or they're.
• Avoid Weasel Words, such as "it is believed that", "is widely regarded as", "some have claimed".
• Avoid Peacock Terms, such as "beautiful", "famous", "popular", "well-known", "significant", "important" and "obvious".
• Avoid informal words, such as "carry out", "pub", "though", "tremendous" and "bigger".
• Avoid overly formal words, such as "circa", "utilise", "whilst", "upon", "commence", "the majority of", "lack", "whereas", "generate", "due to the fact that" and "prior to".
• Avoid vague words, such as "various", "many", "several", "long", "a number of", "just", "very" and "almost".
• Avoid phrases with redundant words, such as "is located in", "the two are both", "they brought along", "they have plans to", "they were all part of", "the last ones to form", "both the towns", "outside of the town", "all of the towns", "received some donations", "still exists today", "it also includes others", "many different towns", "near to the town", "available records show", "to help limit the chance", "christian church", "in order to", "first began", "joined together", "future plans" and "in the year 2007".