Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about counties
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At the WikiProject UK geography, we believe the counties of the United Kingdom are important subjects. In order to facilitate the development of these subdivisions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the following guidelines have been put together.
In the United Kingdom, the meaning of "county" can be confusing. There are several types of official administrative area that are described as counties due to historical modifications of the borders, and because the extent of the "administrative county boundaries" are often not exactly the same as the ceremonial and ancient county boundaries by of the same name; the counties of England and Wales have undergone vast geographic transformation in the last few centuries; the counties of Scotland were officially abolished but their territory (in some cases) exist with a ceremonial role; likewise the counties of Northern Ireland have no administrative role, but are used for geographic demarcation and lieutenancy.
In respect of England, Scotland and Wales, a fundamental part of this guide is to reaffirm the long established policy that we do not take the minority view that the historic/ancient/traditional counties still exist with the former boundaries. Unless (using consensus) a good reason is made not to, the article should describe any administrative and ceremonial changes differences within one article, including any difference in the statistics between them. In England and Wales, where the historic county boundaries are different to modern boundaries the article should discuss these differences, and not be split into new "Historic county of Exampleshire" articles.
Where counties have been abolished or no longer serve any municipal role (such as Cumberland or Ross-shire) these should have their own articles, but maintain that they no longer function as contemporary counties/subdivisions of territory.
[edit] Guidelines
As mentioned, there are several types of official administrative area that are described as counties. They differ from each other in significant ways; some have a county council, some are dominated by connurbations, others no longer function with any administrative, municipal or statistical role. Systems also differ between the United Kingdom's home nations. As such, the guidelines are split according to type of county.
Hit [Show] in the upper box to reveal the guidelines. Please widen your window if the display is distorted.
English, ceremonial, "Shire county"
EXAMPLES: Somerset, North Yorkshire and Berkshire.
English, ceremonial, Metropolitan county
EXAMPLES: Greater Manchester, West Midlands (county).
Former counties of England (those that no longer function with an administrative role)
EXAMPLES: Avon (county), Cumberland, Middlesex.
Counties of Scotland
EXAMPLES: Cromartyshire, Renfrewshire (historic).
Former counties of Wales (those that no longer function with an administrative role)
EXAMPLES: Glamorgan, Denbighshire (historic).
[edit] Optional extra sections
- Notable people - two or three paragraphs mentioning some of the notable current and former residents of the county and what they are notable for. This should preferably be prose, not a list. An alternative to this section is spread information about notable people throughout the article in other sections: historical figures in History, politicians in Politics, artists in Culture, etc.
- Culture - theatre, fine art, music, dance, architecture, food originating from the county, festivals, carnivals, etc
[edit] Additional sub-pages
- The county should come with a page List of places in Exampleshire which lists all of the settlements in the county, and in a separate section lists places of interest, such as tourist attractions. The list may additionally include a section listing other sub-divisions, such as districts and parliamentary constituencies). These pages should not be used for counties with no contemporary municipal, administrative or statistical role (i.e. former counties).
- The county should come with a page at WikiMedia Commons containing media (e.g. photographs, diagrams) relating to the county. This is linked with {{commons}} in the external links section.
[edit] Dos and Don'ts
- Per WP:TRIVIA, do not use a "trivia", "miscellaneous" or "other facts" section.
- Per WP:LIST, avoid using lists wherever possible (particularly for "notable people" or "subdivisions"), consider using tables, diagrams or prose.
- Per WP:DATE and WP:CONTEXT, do not link standalone years. Only link full dates or dates with a day and a month. The same applies to dates in the footnotes.
- Avoid describing named-areas that are verifiabley part of a wider settlement as "districts" or "suburbs", unless citation supports this. Whilst these two terms have common usages, they also indicate a specific and technical geographic term to which an area may not actually conform.
- Per WP:EL and WP:SPAM, be reluctant to add external links unless they are essential, and always restrict them to the External Links section, or to within an appropriately tagged reference.
[edit] 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.
- Only make wikilinks that are relevant to the context. Common words do not need wikilinking.
- A word only needs to be wikilinked once within each section.
- It is not recommended 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.
- All fair-use images need a fair use rationale.
- Image captions should not end with a full-stop if the caption does not form a complete sentence.
- 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).
- Blogs and personal websites are not reliable sources.
- Inline citations belong immediately after punctuation marks.
- Each "notable resident" needs a reference.
- Portal links belong in the "see also" section.
- "Further info" links belong at the top of sections.
- Include lists only if they cannot be made into prose or their own article.
- Lists within prose should be avoided.
- Unspaced en dashes are used for ranges. Unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes are used for punctuation. The same applies to dashes in the footnotes. See WP:MOS#Dashes.
- "
" (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 conversion template, eg. {{convert|5|mi|km|0}}.
- Whole numbers under ten should be spelled out as words, except when in lists, tables or infoboxes.
- Sentences should not start with a numeral. Either recast the sentence or spell the number out.
- Usually, only the first word in a section heading needs a capital letter.
- Short sections and paragraphs are discouraged.
- The words "current", "recent" & "to date" should be avoided as they become outdated.
- Ampersands should not be used, except when in a name, eg., Marks & Spencer.
- Southeast is one word (and may or may not be hyphenated). This does not apply when it is the name of an area, eg. South East England.
- In longer sentences, a comma may be needed before "and", "due to", "such as", "including", "as", "because" or "but".
- "Past few years" has a different meaning to "last few years".
- "Within" has a different meaning to "in".
- Full-stops are needed after each initials in someone's name.
- Hyphens should not be placed after words ending in ly, eg. widely-used phrase (except if the ly word could also describe the noun, eg. friendly-looking man)
- Do not use contractions, such as "can't" and "they're".
- "While" should only be used when emphasising that two events occur at the same time, or when emphasising contrast. It should not be used as an additive link.
- Using "with" as an additive link can lead to wordy and awkward prose, eg. the town has ten councillors, with one being the district mayor → the town has ten councillors; one is the district mayor
- Beginning a sentence with "there", when it does not stand for anything, leads to wordy prose, eg. There are ten houses in the village → The village has ten houses. The same applies to "it".
- 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 or words, such as "carry out" and "pub".
- Avoid overly-formal or archaic words, such as "circa", "utilise", "whilst", "upon", "commence" and "prior".
- Avoid wordy terms, such as "the majority of" and "a number of".
- Avoid vague words, such as "various", "many", "several", "long" 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", "available records show" and "in the year 2007".
[edit] Resources
- Statistics: Office for National Statistics, Census related resources, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), Neighbourhood statistics (Parish data etc.)
- Population data (see below for England): Ayrshire, East (PDF), Falkirk, Moray, Lanarkshire, North
- Maps:
- Multimap
- OS Get a map
- Ordnance Survey for Northern Ireland
- OpenStreetMap is starting to get good coverage of some parts of the UK (eg Isle of Wight, North London, NW Surrey, Birmingham, Bedford).
- Ordnance Survey® Election Maps–boundaries of civil parishes, wards, boroughs etc., up to street map scale. The draconian terms and conditions don't seem to prevent GFDL licensing of research by Wikipedia editors, as long as the editors themselves don't use the information for financial gain, and no-one copies actual extracts, mapping data or layers from the maps.
- Books: There is a list of UK geography books and the Wikipedians who own them at Wikipedia:Library/Places#UK. You can request info from the owners of the relevant books.
- Websites: 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica [1]
- Photos : Geograph British Isles project
- Distance : GENUK&I distance gazetteer, Postcode distance calculator
| England | |
|---|---|
| Bedfordshire | Bedfordshire facts & figures |
| · Luton | |
| Berkshire | West Berkshire 2001 Census data |
| Bristol | Ward finder |
| Buckinghamshire | |
| · Milton Keynes | |
| Cambridgeshire | |
| · Peterborough | |
| Cheshire | |
| · Halton | |
| · Warrington | |
| Cornwall | Parish population data |
| · Isles of Scilly | |
| Cumbria | Census 2001 |
| Derbyshire | |
| · Derby | |
| Devon | East Devon parish population data (PDF) |
| · Plymouth | |
| · Torbay | |
| Dorset | Parish population data (import should be complete) |
| · Bournemouth | |
| · Poole | |
| County Durham | Durham County Council 2001 Census data |
| · Darlington | |
| · Hartlepool | |
| · Stockton-on-Tees | |
| East Riding of Yorkshire | |
| · Kingston-upon-Hull | |
| East Sussex | |
| · Brighton and Hove | |
| Essex | |
| · Southend-on-Sea | |
| · Thurrock | |
| Gloucestershire | |
| · South Gloucestershire | |
| Greater London | |
| Greater Manchester | |
| Hampshire | 2001 census |
| · Southampton | |
| · Portsmouth | |
| Herefordshire | 2001 census |
| Hertfordshire | Population and census data |
| Isle of Wight | |
| Kent | 2001 Census Area Profiles |
| · Medway | |
| Lancashire | |
| · Blackburn with Darwen | |
| · Blackpool | |
| Leicestershire | Census 2001 |
| · Leicester | |
| Lincolnshire | Parish population profiles |
| · North Lincolnshire | |
| · North East Lincolnshire | |
| Merseyside | |
| Norfolk | |
| North Yorkshire | |
| · York | |
| · Middlesbrough | |
| · Redcar and Cleveland | |
| · Stockton-on-Tees | |
| · Northamptonshire | |
| Northumberland | Tynedale population data (PDF) |
| Nottinghamshire | |
| · Nottingham | |
| Oxfordshire | |
| Rutland | |
| Shropshire | |
| · Telford and Wrekin | |
| Somerset | Parish population data |
| · Bath and North East Somerset | Census Data |
| · North Somerset | Census Information |
| South Yorkshire | |
| Staffordshire | |
| · Stoke-on-Trent | |
| Suffolk | |
| Surrey | |
| Tyne and Wear | |
| Warwickshire | |
| West Midlands | |
| West Sussex | Ward profiles |
| West Yorkshire | |
| Wiltshire | Wiltshire Community History from Wiltshire County Council giving brief historical information and references for settlements including old maps and Population by community 1801–2001 census data |
| · Swindon | Population by community 1801–2001 census data at Wiltshire Community History from Wiltshire County Council |
| Worcestershire | |
