BattleTechWiki:Manual of Style/BattleTech Style Guide

Note: This style guide details stylistic elements that all editors should incorporate to help present a uniform style for the BattleTechWiki articles. It was borrowed from a similar guide being built by Editor Mbear.

Article titles

• Article titles should be in the form of a singular noun, such as BattleMech.

BattleTech-specific cases

The following words always appear in the form shown below:

• AeroSpace Fighter
• BattleMech
• BattleTech
• DropPort
• DropShip
• JumpShip
• 'Mech
• MechWarrior
• OmniMech
• OmniFighter
• ProtoMech
• WarShip

This section is an adaptable part of the guide; as new terms are introduced—in a stylistic way—with new products, they will be added here.

Capitalization

Standard grammatical rules should be followed with regards to capitalization. Should emphasis be needed, it should be given in the form of italics or boldface, not all caps.

Correct - BattleMechs are not robots.

Incorrect - BattleMechs are NOT robots.

The families ruling the five Successor States should be referred to with capitals, i.e. House Davion, House Kurita, House Liao, House Marik, and House Steiner.

Clan commands are always capitalized. Such as with Point, Star, Nova, Trinary, Supernova, Cluster, Galaxy, and Touman. Clans do not have an "officer" or "enlisted" corps. They have trueborn and freeborn, and every rank is a regimented form of their "Warrior Corps." These include Point Commander, Star Commander, Star Captain, Star Colonel, and Khan which are capitalized.

"Clan" should be capitalized whenever referring to the descendants of Kerensky. Clan Jade Falcon. I am a Clan warrior. The Northwind Highlanders also use the term "clan" of course, and should be capitalized only when used with a proper name: Clan McDougal. Yakuza clans are not capitalized excepted when used as part of a full name: the Nogachi Clan.

Military commands are also capitalized

Correct - Twenty-first Galedon Regulars, Ninety-seventh Adder Sentinels, Seventh Deneb Light Cavalry

Incorrect - Fifth sword of light, 8th orloff grenadiers

Note from Herb Beas when he was Line Developer

We also do not capitalize "century" or give centuries in the form of numbers. So, the following are examples of "WRONG!" in the BattleTech style guide I know I gave you all several times over:

• "The 20th Century..."
• "The late Twenty-fourth Century..."
• "We see 50 stars in this region..."
• "The 11th Mechanized Infantry is stationed on..."

The following is how you should have written the above:

• "The twentieth century..."
• "The late twenty-fourth century..."
• "We see fifty stars in this region..."
• "The Eleventh Mechanized Infantry is stationed on..."

English language

There are many different countries that speak and write in English, leading to different spellings of some words. Since BattleTech is created by an American company, it is most appropriate to write articles using American spelling and grammar. Editors who are familiar with other methods of spelling are not mandated to write articles in 'American' English since they are unfamiliar with it, but the article should be converted to American style by those that do.

Numbers

• Write out any number under 11.

Ex: Three, Seven, Nine, 13, 15, 23

• Use commas to aid in understanding every three spaces.

Ex: 2,983,802,928

• Use decimal points to indicate numbers smaller than one, not commas.

Ex: 394.09

Military Commands

• When military command article titles involve numbers, the text should always be represented as a number.

Ex: 1st Davion Guards, 304th Assault (Clan Ghost Bear)

• When writing about military commands in the body of an article, the numerical portion of the command's title should be spelled out, unless it is higher than one hundred.

Ex: First Davion Guards, 304th Assault (Clan Ghost Bear)