User:Hlj/CWediting

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This is a page that I use for common editing style for American Civil War articles. I have written or edited well over 300 articles and try to use consistent punctuation, capitalization, styles of references, etc. Although my choices are not definitive, they are usually based on style guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style or on Wikipedia:Manual of Style. In any event, if I need to discuss stylistic matters with new readers, I can always point them at this page and not reinvent the wheel. Comments welcome. Hal Jespersen 19:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Military ranks

  • Use first lieutenant and second lieutenant, not 1st or 2nd (unless abbreviated).
  • Abbreviations should have Wiki links if they are used for the first time in an article. Abbreviations I try to use (outside of Order of Battle pages where space is at a premium) are: Lt. Gen., Maj. Gen., Brig. Gen., Col., Lt. Col., Maj., Capt., 1st Lt., 2nd Lt., Sgt. (Note that the link for Lieutenant General needs to be qualified as [[Lieutenant General (United States) | Lt. Gen.]]).
  • In my more recent articles, I have established a standard of using the abbreviated ranks consistently, rather than referring over and over again to General Jones, Major General Smith, etc., spelled out, and I also try to always specify the actual rank when an officer is first mentioned in the article. This rank should be the one at the time of the battle, not his highest eventual rank.
  • List the rank outside of the link to the officer's name, such as General Robert E. Lee instead of General Robert E. Lee.

[edit] Unit names

  • Units are capitalized only when they are preceded by a name or number:
    • 2nd Division
    • Hoke's Brigade
    • He chased a Union regiment through the woods and was promoted to be corps commander.
  • Regiments are identified with a number and state, also using the branch of service (infantry, cavalry, etc.) when necessary for clarity. Do not abbreviate the state name using the USPS two-letter abbreviations (like 1st MA). (Exception: In battle maps I draw that go down to the regimental level, I do in fact use the two-letter abbreviations.) The use of Wiki links should be very limited because it is doubtful that there will ever be many regimental articles written. It is unnecessary to append the word 'regiment' to each entry. Examples:
    • 20th Maine Infantry
    • 2nd U.S. Cavalry
  • Brigades are named differently for the two armies:
    • 1st Brigade, 1st Division, I Corps (Union usage)
    • Hood's Brigade or Hood's Texas Brigade (Confederate usage)
    • They ran into a Confederate brigade.
  • Divisions are listed numerically and always need a reference to the corps to which they are assigned:
  • Corps:
    • III Corps (Union usage, coded as [[III Corps (ACW) | III Corps]])
    • First Corps, or Longstreet's Corps (Confederate usage)
    • He assumed command of a corps.
    • They were attacked by two Union corps.
  • Commas: When a multi-name unit is used, commas separate the names and there is always a trailing comma if it's not at the end of the sentence:
    • He joined the 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, at the start of the war.

[edit] Battles

[edit] Biographies

For the first sentence of a biography:

  • The full name is in bold and does not include titles.
  • The name is followed by dates of birth and death, separated by an en-dash (–) and surrounded by parentheses. Those dates are not repeated in the text of the article. The locations of birth and death are not included in the first sentence.
  • Finish the sentence with a description of his/her role, occupations, etc. Reserve accomplishments and superlatives for the second sentence. Example:

The biography should be in rough chronological sequence after that brief first paragraph. Avoid tabular listings of dates, ranks, assignments, etc. Although reference works and websites often list dozens of dates about a person, don't bore the reader by using them all; pick the significant ones. Try to sprinkle in anecdotes and quotes about the person in the appropriate places; don't put them all at the end. However, one quote "summing up the man" at the end is a nice touch.

The statement about death names the place of death (not the date unless it's something interesting or ironic) and the place of burial.

Only relatively lengthy biographies need subheadings. I believe that subheads that introduce only two or three sentences are a waste of time. Some of the headings I do try to use are:

  • Early life and career
  • Civil War
  • Postbellum activities
  • In memoriam

And ones I avoid:

  • Biography
  • Trivia

[edit] Boxes (battle and biography)

I never create these myself because I think they are mostly busy work, but I find that industrious people do add them. Stylistically, the question is what information should be repeated in the normal text of the article. For battles, I assume that the article text takes precedence and create links and name dates, units, locations, and commanders as if the box were not there. (For instance, I always ensure that the full name of an individual is listed with a link, not assuming that the reader will go to the box to find the link.) The lone exception to this is that I do not repeat the casualty figures unless there is something particularly interesting to say about them, or if I have to footnote them. For biographies, there are very few boxes currently, but once again, I repeat all of the dates and locations that may be in the box in the text of the article.

[edit] Refs and Links

I find all the References and External links sections in Wiki are confusing and used inconsistently. I try to follow these guidelines:

  • Any article or web site that I use to extract facts for the article goes into References (always plural), not Sources or External links. When referring to the National Park Service battle summaries, I point to the specific article, not the URL for the entire list of campaigns and battles. It may not be overall Wiki policy, but I include both books and websites in this list, sorted by author name, if applicable. I never use raw URLs without descriptive text in this list.
  • I use External links only for web sites that have interesting additional information, or for maps and photographs I cannot guarantee are in the public domain. If the interesting information is not available on the web site, say for a novel, I use the section title Further reading.

Here's a summary:

Type Used as source for article, footnoted or not Additional, interesting information
Books, magazine articles References Further reading
Websites, URLs References External links
  • I avoid the use of a See also section that contains Wiki links used previously in the article.
  • The sequence for these trailing sections should be:
    • See also
    • References
    • Notes (see below)
    • Further reading
    • External links

[edit] Footnotes

I am a recent user of explicit footnotes, so there are only a few examples in my articles so far. In general, I assume that any fact or quote in the article can be found in one of the References cited. However, sometimes I want to call attention to a specific point, usually one I assume will be controversial, or when the references disagree. In some of my recent, signature articles, such as George B. McClellan and Battle of Antietam, I use extensive footnotes, usually one or more per paragraph. I dislike merely embedding a URL in the main text, which I call a "blind link" because you have to click it to find out what it points to, so I use a footnote.

  1. In the source, code <ref>text of footnote, which may be an explanation of something, a full Reference-style entry, or a page citation to a document already in the References section</ref>
  2. After the References section, code
==Notes==
{{reflist}} or {{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

The reflist macro does the complete job of formatting the notes. When the |colwidth=30em is included, it displays in multiple columns—usually two, but more in a really wide browser window. I generally use multiple columns only for articles with more than 10 footnotes.

[edit] Dates

The Wiki date-preference software accommodates a number of date formats. I code American-style dates. By example:

  • [[July 1]], [[1863]] which will display as July 1, 1863 or 1 July 1863 depending on the reader's preferences. (I always wikify the year in each date, even if the year was mentioned earlier in the text. This is for date formatting, not for linking. If the sentence continues, I put a comma after the year.[1])
  • July 1863 (I think Wiki links to month names are useless. See Screwups below.)
  • From 1861 to 1865 ...
  • Try to treat dates as full units because the date-preference software will mangle some combinations.
  • Not:
    • July 1st
    • the 1st
    • 1st of July
    • from 1861-65
    • July of 1863
    • July, 1863
    • [[July 1]]-[[July 3|3]], [[1863]]

[edit] Locations

  • Always spell out state names; foreign readers should not be expected to know U.S. state abbreviations, particularly the 2-letter USPS abbreviations.
  • As with the 15th Chicago footnote above on dates, commas always come in pairs. Example:
    • The suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland, eventually intersect with those of Washington, D.C.
  • I prefer (although not strongly) the style of links that points to a city/state in one link:
    • Preferred: [[Baltimore, Maryland]]
    • Tolerated: [[Baltimore, Maryland | Baltimore]], [[Maryland]]

[edit] Quotations

Quotations should not be rendered in italic text, per the manual of style, although this is widely violated in many Wikipedia articles. If the quotation is only a sentence or two, I generally put it inline with simple quotation marks. For longer quotations, the use of the <blockquote> mechanism is appropriate, but I have just recently found the Quotation template and am starting to use it to good effect. Coding:

{{Quotation|Here is the text of my quotation, much shorter than I usually use for this template.|Joe Sixpack|Letter to his wife}}

Produces:

Here is the text of my quotation, much shorter than I usually use for this template.

– Joe Sixpack, Letter to his wife

Many in Wikipedia use the Cquote template, but I find it unattractive.

[edit] Abbreviations

I think abbreviations without periods are sloppy writing, so use:

  • Washington, D.C.
  • U.S. Army, U.S. Military Academy
  • 8 a.m., 9:30 p.m.
  • I suppose an exception could be made for USA and CSA, but I don't use them

[edit] Colloquialisms

I avoid the colloquialisms Yankees and Rebels (and certainly things like the "horsemen in blue" or the "graybacks") in articles I write from scratch. I normally use Union (coded as [[Union Army|Union]]) instead of Federal, but don't object to the latter.

Colorful colloquialisms should be avoided for a few reasons:

  1. This is an encyclopedia, which uses "formal writing", not a series of stories or magazine articles.
  2. Non-native English speakers should not be unnecessarily disadvantaged.
  3. I have received complaints about the colorful language in some articles that supposedly "glorifies war". I don't see it that way, but like to avoid arguments.

[edit] Miscellaneous

I am careful to not say "The Union Army" when I mean "Army of the Potomac".

Two kinds of dashes, neither of which can be a hyphen instead:

  • EN-Dash (&ndash;): Used in numeric ranges, such 1861–65
  • EM-Dash (&mdash;): Used to separate clauses—like this—with no surrounding spaces

[edit] Screwups

Although I have been editing on Wikipedia for over two years, I still get surprised by features, styles, etc. that I hadn't encountered before. This section lists errors I've made and haven't corrected on older articles yet.

  • The date style guide says I have used an incorrect format for month-year dates. It should be:
    • July 1863 (no commas)
    • Not: July of 1863 or July, 1863
  • The link to Confederate is not useful. Use
    • [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] or
    • [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ That conforms with 15th Chicago, which states in http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/cmosfaq.html "... there is a general rule of parity: anything that is set off from all or part of a sentence requires two commas, unless the word or phrase being set off is at the beginning or end of the sentence, in which case only one comma is required. Some analogous examples:

    January 4, 1844, was a day like any other.

    Unfortunately, if the paired-comma rule is used, some readers of the European-style dates will sometimes get odd results.


More to come as I think of it...

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