It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow.
This Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all Friends Central wiki articles (though provisions related to accessibility apply across the entire project, not just to articles).
Editors should write using straightforward, easily understood language and structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting.
Where more than one style or format is acceptable under MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason. Edit warring over stylistic choices is unacceptable.
New content added to this page should directly address a persistently recurring style issue.
Standard language[]
Since Friends is an American TV show, it is preferable to use the American English variants of words and spelling rather than British English or other standards, unless the usage of another standard or dialect is intentional, for example a quoation from an English character.
Tense[]
Episode plot sections should be written in Present tense.
Page structure[]
Articles look better and more professional when the short introduction line or paragraph is well formatted and descriptive.
The first phrase, or the first few phrases of an article should make it clear what the article is about. For short articles, this is the first paragraph. For long articles, this is the head section before the first heading.
An article should start with the subject of the article in bold, its function on the show and its relations:
- The One With Rachel's Crush is the thirteenth episode of the fourth season of Friends, which aired on January 29, 1998.
- Paxton Whitehead played Mr. Waltham, Rachel's boss in "The One With Rachel's Crush". (Here the reader can immediately find out the relation of the actor to the Friends show. Subsequent paragraphs can develop more his/her biography and achievements)
- (Similarly) Mr. Waltham is Rachel's boss at Bloomingdale's, portrayed by Paxton Whitehead.
The article should link to other pages of related topics and subjects; generally only the first occurrence of the topic should be linked, for example a character like Phoebe mentioned multiple times should be linked the first time (not a strict rule; there could be one link in the "Plot" section, and another in the "Trivia" section since some users will skip the plot to avoid spoilers).
The article may contain links to useful external resources about its topic/subject, notably Wikipedia, IMDB and YouTube.
- For episode articles, when there is a page on Wikipedia, on IMDb, and a transcript page, these links can be placed in a section "External links".
- For actors and crew, when there is a page on Wikipedia, on IMDb, and an official web page or social media account of the person, these links can be placed in a section "External links".
- When an article talks about other TV shows, films, books, places, or people mentioned in the episodes, it may be useful to link to the relevant Wikipedia articles.
Titles of episode articles[]
In titles of episode pages, all words, including prepositions and definite articles, are capitalized, e.g. "The One With All The Resolutions".
Episode titles in content pages should be quoted with straight double quotes, and should not be italic. If the episode title is a link to the episode article, the double quotes should be outside of the link. The quotes should not include punctuation that is not part of the episode title, for example a comma or a period from the sentence, but not from the title itself.
Titles of character articles[]
The titles of the character articles should be the names of the characters (first name, last name when known). For medical doctors, and when the first name is unknown, it is acceptable the title to start with "Dr." (with a period).
The names of the characters should be taken, in this order, from:
- Reliable in-universe contexts. A "reliable", "in-universe", context is when the characters must know how the name is spelled, and write it or leave it one way, not the other.
- If there are several in-universe spelling variants, these should be enumerated and sourced in the article. The title of the article should reflect the variant found in the most reliable context.
- Relatives (e.g. parents) with the same last name as a character, should use the same last name in their dedicated articles.
- If there is no clear in-universe context with the spelling of a name of a character, but the name appears in the episode credits, then this spelling should be used.
- If a name in the credits is different from the name in-universe, the title of the article should be the one from the in-universe context, and the other name should be added to the "Name" or "Trivia" sections.
- If the name is only documented in an episode script, or in the subtitles (closed captions), then this spelling can be used.
- If a name in the script / subtitles / captions is different from the name in-universe, the title of the article should be the one from the in-universe context, and the other name should be added to the "Name" or "Trivia" sections.
- If the name is only heard in an episode but never seen written, then the article should use a reasonably common spelling of the name.
- If the name of a character is not known (never heard, and never seen written in-universe), the title can be the character's profession or role (Nurse, Guy on the Plane). The title should not include a definite article.
It is not acceptable to guess the last name of characters where there is no reliable reference. Examples include the last names of:
- relatives of the main characters when it is unknown if the relative is from the father's side or the mother's side of the family,
- married characters (male of female) where it is unknown if any of the spouses legally changed their last name after the marriage.
It is not acceptable to guess the middle name of characters where there is no reliable reference. For example, we know that Monica's middle name starts with "E" but the entire middle name is never revealed in an episode.
Quotations[]
Do not use italics for quotations, unless the source text is itself italicized. Instead, use straight quotation marks for short quotations and block quoting for long ones.
Straight (neutral, vertical) quotation marks are preferred. The left and right marks are identical. These are found on typical typewriters and computer keyboards. Typographic or curly quotation marks should be converted to straight ones when found, although this is not a top priority and the users who unintentionally insert such quotes (possibly using text from an external source) should not be disturbed.
The Friend central encyclopedia uses the "logical quotation" style in all articles similar to Wikipedia. Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence. Examples are given below.
- Correct: Did Rachel say, "Here I am"? (question mark applies to whole sentence)
- Incorrect: Did Rachel say, "Here I am?" (incorrect to apply the question mark to the quotation)
- Correct: Rachel said, "Where am I?" (question mark applies to quoted material only)
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.
- Ross needed, he said, "to find Chandler".
- Ross said: "I need to find Chandler."
If the quoted sentence has been broken up with an editorial insertion, still include the terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.
- "I need", said Ross, "to find Chandler."
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause that should be preceded by a comma, omit the full stop (period) – but other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation mark, may be retained.
- Ross said, "We were on a break", which annoyed Rachel.
- Ross shouted, "We were on a break!", which annoyed Rachel.
If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, use a comma outside the quotation mark instead of a full stop inside it, but retain any other terminal punctuation, such as question marks.
- "We broke up instead", said Rachel.
- "You broke up?", asked Monica.
Italics[]
In a page text:
- TV show names, and film/movie titles should be in italics, not quoted.