Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Styles
 | This is an essay on style. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more WikiProjects on how to format and present article content within their area of interest. This information is not a formal Wikipedia policy or guideline, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
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| Style and formatting |
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Styles
[edit]Bold face
[edit]Use italics, not boldface, for emphasis in article text. Use boldface in the remainder of the article only for a few special uses:
- In aircraft articles, variants if no header is used.
Italic face
[edit]According to MOS:TITLE#Italics and Wikipedia:ITALICS#Italic face, individual named aircraft (but not prefixes, classifications, identifying numbers or other designations for them) should be italicized.
Capitalization
[edit]Flag icons
[edit]In general, the use of flag icons is not recommended; neither, however, is it prohibited. When deciding whether flag icons are appropriate in a particular context, consider:
- Do the icons convey useful information to the reader, or are they merely decorative? Icons that differentiate among several parties (for example, icons used to indicate commander allegiance in Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945)) are likely to be useful, while icons that convey irrelevant or redundant information are usually not.
- Can flag icons be used consistently? In other words, do all the groups in a given list have usable flags? If only a few have them, it may be better to omit flags for all the items than to have a different layout for each one.
- Will adding icons disrupt the existing structure or flow of the text?
When flag icons are used, they should be historically accurate ones. In particular:
- When dealing with items related to a particular time period, avoid using anachronistic flags from other time periods. Be especially careful to avoid using the flags of modern countries for ancient ones; in many cases, the proper successor of a country no longer in existence is a matter of considerable controversy.
- Avoid using national flags in inappropriate contexts, such as for groups or individuals not aligned with any country.
When dealing with biographical infobox templates, the most common practice is to use flag icons to indicate allegiance or branch of service, but not place of birth or death. However, there remains considerable disagreement regarding the appropriateness of flags in such cases, so editors should not regard this as a universal rule.
Repeated use of a flag in a table or infobox (usually to save space and avoid repeating the country name) should only be done if the flag has been used previously in the table with the country name.