Phineas and Ferb Wiki talk:Manual of Style/Archive

Older issues that have been resolved are archived here.

Song Lyrics
Many of the song have the lyrics in italics and spoken words in regular type. For the Manual of Style, I have recommended it be the other way around. In a song, people sing more often than they speak, and italics are a little harder to read than regular type, so it should be used sparingly.

I have also recommended that full punctuation be used in the lyrics. This is not the traditional way of writing lyrics, but it looks better when it is done.

If no one has any objections, we should go through the songs and update them to match the new style. — RRabbit42 19:51, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Character links
After the problems we had with the anonymous IP user going in and changing all the references to Buford's last name after Swampy gave us the correct spelling, we've been trying to make use of shorter redirects. For example, using  Phineas  instead of  Phineas .

We currently have one or more anonymous IP users who are going in and expanding them back out. They may think they are being helpful, but they are making more work for us (definitely me) by having to use the Undo function to restore the shorter redirects.

I've added this information to the Links section. — RRabbit42 14:50, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Song title capitalization
The issue came up recently about whether song titles should have each word capitalized. Examples:


 * Ready for the Bettys = episode
 * Ready For The Bettys = song
 * Ready for the Bettys (song) = song
 * The Ballad of Badbeard = episode
 * The Ballad of Badbeard (song) = song

This rule was never formally adopted, so we do not have The Ballad Of Badbeard to designate the song. In addition, we also have a new song called Christmas is Starting Now instead of Christmas Is Starting Now.

The subject is also complicated by the fact that some CDs list their songs in all capitals (READY FOR THE BETTYS), some have each word capitalized, some do not capitalize unimportant words, and some have a mix of these on the same CD. Example of the latter:


 * from ABBA GOLD: GREATEST HITS
 * Take a Chance on Me
 * The Name Of The Game

I vote that if we see an official song title listing from Disney that isn't contradicted by anything else, such as when it's released on CD, we go by the title listing. When there is any question as to how to capitalize a song, we apply the same rules as we do for episodes:


 * Capitalize the first word of the song.
 * Do not capitalize less-important words like "a", "the", "in", et cetera (except if they are the first word of the song).
 * When the song title is the same as the episode, format the song title the same as the episode and add "(song)" at the end of it.
 * It is better to write out  The Ballad of Badbeard  than  The Ballad Of Badbeard  because that makes it clear to all editors that you are referring to the song. People that don't know there is a difference between uppercase and lowercase letters in page names might think that's a typo and change it to  "The Ballad of Badbeard" .
 * — RRabbit42 ( talk ) 18:51, December 11, 2009 (UTC)
 * That plan sounds good. What does everyone else think? The Flash  {talk} 22:54, December 19, 2009 (UTC)

Time for formal adoption
Since there has been almost no discussion on these policies and only a couple of new things have been added in the last 6 months, I think it's time to formally adopt the Manual of Style after the subject of song title capitalization is settled. — RRabbit42 ( talk ) 18:51, December 11, 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised we haven't adopted it yet. We've used it and linked to it since it's been up, so we should just count it as official. The Flash  {talk} 22:54, December 19, 2009 (UTC)


 * Discussion will cease at 11:59pm on Saturday, January 9, 2010 (UTC). There will be no vote, decision will be made by consensus.

This should be formally adopted since it's been used as policy for more than a year now without much incident. There has been no protest against these rules and they seem to work very well. There may need to be a tweak here or there in the future, but the bulk of it has been followed and used as official anyways. —Topher ( talk ) 20:59, January 4, 2010 (UTC)

Adopted
The discussion period has now ended. The Manual of Style has been adopted as an official policy for this wiki. — RRabbit42 ( talk ) 01:19, January 10, 2010 (UTC)