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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Style guide |
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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. |
The Military history WikiProject's style guide is intended to apply to all articles within the project's scope—in other words, to all articles related to military history. While the recommendations presented here are well-suited for the vast majority of such articles, there exist a number of peculiar cases where, for lack of a better solution, alternate approaches have been taken. These exceptions are often the result of protracted negotiation; if something seems unusual or out-of-place, it may be worthwhile to ask before attempting to change it, as there might be reasons for the oddity that are not immediately obvious!
The current status of these guidelines as part of the Manual of Style was established following this discussion.
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An article should generally be placed at the most common name used to refer to the event (such as Battle of Gettysburg, Siege of Leningrad, Attack on Pearl Harbor, or Doolittle Raid). If there is no common name, the name should be a descriptive geographic term such as "battle of X" or "siege of Y", where X and Y are the locations of the operations; see also the section on capitalization. Non-neutral terms such as "attack", "slaughter", "massacre", or "raid" should be used with care.
If disambiguation is needed, the year may be added in parentheses (as in Battle of Salamis in Cyprus (306 BC)). Multiple battles at the same place in the same year should be called "First", "Second", and so forth (as in First Battle of Zürich and Second Battle of Zürich); alternately, the month of the battle may be used as a disambiguation (as in Invasion of Tulagi (May 1942)).
Operational codenames generally make poor titles, as the codename gives no indication of when or where the action took place and only represents one side's planning (potentially causing the article to focus on that side's point of view to the detriment of the other). It is better to use an appropriate geographical name for the article, creating a redirect from the operational name, for all but the most well-known operations (such as Operation Barbarossa).
An article about a unit, formation, or base should be placed at "Name (optional disambiguator)". The name should generally be either the official name used by the armed forces to which the unit or base belongs; or, in cases where no relevant formal name exists or where a formal name is not commonly employed by historians, the most common name used in historical literature.
A name originally in a language other than English should be adapted by translating common terms (such as designations of size and type) and transliterating the remainder of the name. The choice of which components of the name are to be translated (and how) should follow the conventions employed by reputable historical works on the topic; some collected recommendations for specific terms are maintained by the relevant national task forces. The original name should be provided in the first sentence of the article, following the translated name; for example, "The 3rd Mountain Division (3. Gebirgs-Division) was..." or "Boden Fortress (Swedish: Bodens fästning) is...".
Names should generally follow the stylistic conventions used by the service or country of origin. For example, while US and British usage has spelled-out numerals for army-level formations and Roman numerals for corps, editors writing about different countries should follow those countries' normal usages; thus, "3. Panzer Armee" becomes "3rd Panzer Army", and "18-ya Armiya" becomes "18th Army".
For units, the optional disambiguator should be the common name of the country whose armed forces the unit belongs to (as in 4th Infantry Division (United Kingdom)), or, if such usage is still ambiguous (or where the unit does not serve a country), the name of the service branch to which the unit belongs (as in 1st Panzer Division (Wehrmacht)). The disambiguator is not necessary in cases where the name of the country is already present in the name of the unit (as in The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada), or where the name is clearly unique (as in Preobrazhensky regiment).
In cases where a unit's name can reasonably be expected to be used by multiple armed forces—particularly in the case of numerical unit designations—the units should generally be preemptively disambiguated when the article is created, without waiting for the appearance of a second article on an identically-named unit. If this is done, the un-disambiguated version of the unit name should be created as a disambiguation page (or a redirect to the disambiguated version).
For bases, the optional disambiguator should be the region, province, state, or territory in which the base or fortress is located; for example, "Fort Lyon (Virginia)" and "Fort Lyon (Colorado)". The disambiguator is not necessary in cases where the name is unique to a single fortress or base.
When a unit or base has had multiple names over the course of its existence, the title should generally be the last name used; however, exceptions can be made in cases where the subject is clearly more commonly known by one of the previous names.
There are a number of other naming conventions which are applicable to the articles in our scope. The most relevant ones are as follows:
In addition, several task forces maintain more detailed naming recommendations for particular topics:
A number of naming conventions exist specifically for category names; most of these are used to ensure consistent naming among all the sub-categories of a particular category.
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This section is a WikiProject essay on notability. It contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more WikiProjects on how they interpret notability within their area of expertise. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are free to, but not obliged to follow it during XfD's.
WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays on notability that meet or exceed the expectations of notability or the applicable sub-guideline (BIO, ORG, NUMBER, ACADEMICS, and rest of the sub guidelines). Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
In general, a topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
In particular, the following types of individuals will almost always have sufficient coverage to qualify:
Conversely, any person who is only mentioned in genealogical records or family histories, or is traceable only through primary documents, is probably not notable.
The structures suggested in this section are intended to serve as a starting point for writing a good article; they are not meant to enforce a single, binding structure on all articles, nor to limit the topics a fully developed article will discuss.
The opening paragraph (or lead section) should concisely convey:
The article can be structured along these lines:
The opening paragraph (or lead section in a longer article) should concisely convey:
The article can be structured along these lines:
Because of the key role the discussion of individual battles plays in military historiography, it is often useful to summarize information about a particular battle in an article of broader scope (such as one discussing a war or military leader). In such cases, the bulk of the material should be in the article on the battle itself; the summary in the external article should be trimmed to one or two paragraphs that concisely present the following:
The opening paragraph (or lead section) should concisely convey:
The article can be structured along these lines:
The article can be structured along these lines:
The opening paragraph (or lead section) should concisely convey:
The article can be structured along these lines:
"In popular culture" sections should be avoided unless the subject has had a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture. Any popular culture reference being considered for inclusion must be attributed to a reliable source for the article topic. Items meeting these requirements should typically be worked into the text of the article; a separate section for popular culture items, and in particular the following, should be avoided:
This tends to be a particular problem in articles on military hardware (weapons, vehicles, and so forth); for example, the Mauser K98 and the M1 Garand may appear in any World War II film, and their many appearances don't warrant an exhaustive list. On the other hand, a discussion of the Webley representing a stereotypical British revolver, or a conceptual artist's public response to the symbolism of the East European tank monument, is certainly notable.
The general rule is that wherever a military term is an accepted proper noun, it should be capitalized. Where there is uncertainty as to whether a term is generally accepted, consensus should be reached on the talk page.
In general, the use of flag icons is not recommended; neither, however, is it prohibited. When deciding whether flag icons are appropriate in a particular context, consider:
When flag icons are used, they should be historically accurate ones. In particular:
When dealing with biographical infobox templates, the most common practice is to use flag icons to indicate allegiance or branch of service, but not place of birth or death. However, there remains considerable disagreement regarding the appropriateness of flags in such cases, so editors should not regard this as a universal rule.
In general, articles should strive to be precise. Where the names of specific operations, formations, or commanders are available, for example, it is usually better to use them instead of more general terms; "The Ninth United States Army would launch an offensive, codenamed Operation Grenade, across the Roer" is likely to be more helpful to the reader than "The United States would launch an offensive across the Roer".
It is important to note, however, that the level of precision in an article should be appropriate for its scope. Articles dealing with narrower and more specialized topics can use more specific terminology than may be feasible in articles dealing with broad overviews or very general topics; and general terminology is often appropriate in an introductory section even where more specific terms are used in the body of the article. Precision should not be pursued to such an extent that it impairs the average reader's understanding of the topic.
Ships may be referred to either using female pronouns ("she", "her") or genderless pronouns ("it", "its"). Either usage is acceptable, but each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so.
Policy requires that articles reference only reliable sources; however, this is a minimal condition, rather than a final goal. With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should aim to be based primarily on published secondary works by reputable historians. The use of high-quality primary sources is also appropriate, but care should be taken to use them correctly, without straying into original research. Editors are encouraged to extensively survey the available literature—and, in particular, any available historiographic commentary—regarding an article's topic in order to identify every source considered to be authoritative or significant; these sources should, if possible, be directly consulted when writing the article.
The nature of historical material requires that articles be thoroughly—even exhaustively—cited. At a minimum, the following all require direct citation:
In general, any statement for which a citation has been explicitly requested by another editor should be provided with one as well.
Beyond this, editors are encouraged to cite any statement that is obscure or difficult to find in the available sources, as well as any significant statement in general. There is no numerical requirement for a particular density of citations or for some predetermined number of citations in an article; editors are expected to use their best judgement as to how much citation is appropriate. When in doubt, cite; additional citations are harmless at worst, and may prove invaluable in the long term.
In general, articles may use one of two citation styles:
The final choice of which style to follow is left to the discretion of an article's editors.
Editors should attempt to take a reasonable approach when requesting citations. Unless the accuracy of a statement is in significant doubt, it is generally better to start with a request for citations on the article's talk page, rather than by inserting {{fact}} tags—particularly large numbers of such tags—into the article. Over-tagging should be avoided; if a large portion of the article is uncited, adding an {{unreferenced}} or {{citation style}} tag to an entire section is usually more helpful than simply placing {{fact}} tags on every sentence. Note that some articles contain per-paragraph citations, so checking the citations at the end of a paragraph may yield information about facts or figures in the paragraph as a whole.
The various primary and auxiliary infobox templates and navigation templates maintained by the Military history WikiProject are all coded to use a common set of styling characteristics. This is needed primarily because a number of the templates are designed to be stacked together to present the appearance of a continuous block; it is also beneficial for providing a consistent appearance to the entire set of articles within our scope.
A few general guidelines apply to all military history infoboxes:
A primary infobox is intended to provide a summary table for some topic. It should generally be placed at the top of an article, before the lead section; this will cause it to be displayed in the top right corner.
Several infobox templates that are not specifically designed for military topics are also commonly used on military-related articles:
An auxiliary infobox is a supplementary template intended to be used in conjunction with one of the primary infoboxes; it is usually placed directly below the primary infobox, but other layouts are possile. It is common for multiple auxiliary infoboxes to be used on a single article.
The various navigation templates maintained by the Military history WikiProject are all intended to be implemented through a single base template, which combines the project's common template style<
