Wikipedia:Rules to consider/Layout recommendations

This is an open community project.

Its yours to layout information in articles as you feel is appropriate.

You can use this info to make others feel more comfortable reading your articles. It focuses on how to use certain layout elements. To get info about how to generate these wiki code elements. See How does one edit a page/Quick_reference.

Here are some recommendations which you may use :

The use of colors

• use color sparingly You do not know how much color is presented on the recipients machine. Wikipedia is international. Colors have different meaning on different cultural backgrounds. Too many colors on one page make them look funny but unencyclopedic too.

• • use the color red only for the purpose to alert something, show up serious errors

Highlighting

• do not highlight every instance of title item in text body The reader knows what article he or she is reading. Making every instance highlight with bold typing style is unnecassary.

Heading lines

• use font size less to the size of pagetitle

• use font size only one step size bigger or lesser than the group of text it refers to. (Very big fonts only make sense if you have a detailed outline structure that need several levels of headers)

Links

• do link only one or more of instances of the same item. Do not link all instances of it

• group links together Furthermore do group such links if possible.

• do not overlink a text.

Group things

• group things to about max seven items The human information processing has a capability to store about seven items in short term memory. Superlong lists, unending prosa and monster sentences appear uncomfortable to read therefore. Use all kinds of grouping instead. Use lists, sublists, paragraphing. And: use short sentences.

Balance

• balance parts of a page. Let there be a balance in weight of the parts of an article according to its length. (Content, Bibliography) It does not make sense to have a few sentences on a topic and a huge list of literature links. (This may be difficult to obey when an item is new.??)

Commentary

• do not mix encyclopedic style and commentary. The form of 'I think ' usually indicates some form of commentary. Feel free to express everything in a /Talk page added to the article. If there isnt one, add one.

These recommendations are from the author(s) of this page.

Please discuss: /Layout recommendations talk

There are other recommendations : Wikipedia policy