Help:Style guide

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All present InfoVis Glossary–articles implement a certain layout and style that makes them easily readable and fit into the glossary–framework. To maintain this coherent style we strongly encourage you to stick to the following guidelines.

General

There are basically three types of pages in this reference, each having its own structure :

  • Overview pages
  • Glossary/Reference–articles
  • Announcement/News

Overviews

Overviews — like the Main page — provide for quick information about and navigation–aids through a thematically coherent section.

They need to present a lot of information on a few screens; therefore these are the only pages that use the full width of the text–area instead of reserving space on the left side for margin–notes. Remember to avoid templates utilizing these such as definition or quotation.

Switching to this layout isn't yet automatic; page margins have to be moved manually like in the following example:

 
 <div style="margin-left:-80px; margin-top:0em;">
 ... page content ...
 </div>
 __NOTOC__

Glossary articles

Glossary articles may be seen as the core content of this reference. Their most remarkable feature is the definition–section at the top of the page — in case of further structuring even before the first section title. This paragraph should provide a short quotable description of the article presented below.

{{Definition|... text ...}} results in

... text ...

Typesetting

Many characters (glyphs) appear to be interchangable at first sight; when used in typesetting however, they can have completely different meanings. Consistent use of correct punctuation and typefaces builds a harmonic and clear impression for readers.

Punctuation

The - sign is obsolete: Use – or — instead.

Typefaces

In all reference articles the title should be mentioned in the first sentence or at least within the first paragraph and set in bold letters.

Emphasis and quotation

Sequences within a sentence can be emphasized by setting them in italic letters. Technical terms, names, or terms in foreign languages should also be set in itlaic.

Inline quotation is done by adding a refernce number in brackets at the end of the passage. Citing complete paragraphs is done by using the quotation–template:

{{Quotation|... text ...}} results in

... text ...
{{{2}}}