Styling Guidelines

ForewordDon't Worry About This Page

If you're writing information on this site, and you hope for it to be useful to Nylanders later, then:

• You are doing great
• That is awesome, thank you
• Don't stress about any of the details you'll find here.formatting.

Really, I've writtenconjured up these guidelines as if they're very strict, but if you write something down that someone else might use later, then you are winning at the wiki game. That's the whole point.

These guidelines are just here if you're inclined to sweat these sorts of details, and if that makes you want a "proper style" of some sort.

ThisAs stylesuch, this guide is intended to be "directionallydirectional canonical."but Thatnot is,prescriptive -- so, if someone comesedits alongjust the styling on some page, let's view it as constructive if it brings the page closer to editthese guidelines, and let's view it as destructive if it takes the stylespage onfurther away from these guidelines.

Again, don't sweat it. The point of a page, then changing them to be more like what's described herepage is viewednot asits constructive,styling, the point of a page is the knowledge it collects, represents, and changing them to be less like what's described here is viewed as destructive, and slightly rude I think.preserves.

Guidelines

We want our pages to be very easy to read, even on tiny screens or in low light; we also want our pages to be pretty easy to write.

• Headers, lists, and links are top-tier styling elements. When they're good, they're great. Adding them where they make sense often makes a page better. (
• Links are esepcially useful. They make it easy to provide context for the reader who wants it or needs it, without forcing every reader of your page to slog through that background if they're not interested. They can connect the pages of this site with the rest of the context of this site, making the whole wiki more of a living, breathing thing. Links are awesome.)awesome.

Maintain the visual hierarchy of headers. So: each top-level heading should be "Large", each sub-heading of those should be "Medium", each sub-heading of those should be "Small", and each sub-heading of those should be "Tiny". This is fussy, perhaps, but it's not hard to do, and it makes the logical structure of the page easier for everyone to intuitively understand.

As a side note, if you're actually using Tiny headers in this way, it's probably time to break the page into smaller pages; beyond two levels of headers, people start getting lost in your document. An entire page of only a few headers, some paragraphs, and a few lists, with links sprinkled throughout where useful? That's a beautiful page.
Good images are typically harder than good text, so I'd never demand them or anything. But oh man they can be really useful.

Just drop them into the page, don't fuss about how the text flows around them or anything, you can spend hours at that stuff when you start. Emphasis with italics is fine, because this is all pretty informal writing;writing. don't

• However, if you overdo it.emphasis, you will sound like you're pounding on the table with your mighty fists. (and, uh, this is probably not the tone you want)

Tables are helpful for structuring data, when the data is shaped like a table.

When you're putting data in a table, the simplest possible table is usually the right table. When some data is sort of table-structured, but not quite? You can probably get by with a doubly-nested list. It's a little harder to read, but it's a bit easier to write, and it's a lot easier for the next editor to change it without breaking it. Don't use ittables for page-level formatting. It's a big time-sink to make that work, it's a huge time-sink to make that work on different screen sizes, and it probably won't survive the next person who edits it.

Just about every other styling option tends, over time, to make the site harder to read:

• Emphasis with bold is not nearly as good as italics; it tends to detract from all of the content around itself.
• I do think there are places to use bold, though. One instance is when you're trying to do some sort of "inline heading" like in the following:
• Name Jane Smith

Address 3999 Nyland Way Phone 555-555-5555 Avoid using center, right, or justified alignment in nearly all cases. Think of them as unusual special effects, not as normal formatting.

Yes, people make good use of center for headings in some documents. But it's really hard to do that over the whole site, consistently, when everyone is editing the site, and that's what "good use" would entail. Avoid mostalmost all other formatting: colored text, highlighted text, or strikethrough all look reallyvery "loud".loud and messy

And-- then,easily forso messy that they make pages aversive to interact with. Only use them if there's a rathertruly fussierobvious thing,reason maintainwhy documentthey're hierarchy.needed Yourin top-levelthat headers should be "Large Headers." Use "Medium Headers" only for subheaders inside a section headed by a "Large Header", then use "Small Headers" only for subheaders inside a section headed by a "Medium Header", and so on.context. (If thesomeone headercomes designthrough isand tooremoves big,your too small,colors or somehowhighlights, that means the reason you had in mind was not workingobvious!) for us, we can change them all together, site-wide.)