Attack on Titan Wiki:Manual of Style

This is the Manual of Style for the  that explains the aspects that must be taken into account at the time of writing articles. Following these guidelines will result in articles of high quality, pleasant to read, correct and organized.

We hope this guide will help you make valuable edits in the easiest way possible. If you have doubts, do not hesitate to contact one of our Administrators.

Perspective
Articles describing fictional events, characters and other stuff taking place into the universe of Attack on Titan should be written using an in-universe wording; i.e., as taking place in true life. This means that phrases like "in Episode 7" or "in the Female Titan arc" should be left out of sentences.

Occasionally, it may be necessary to mention the manga or anime though. This will be allowed, but only on a case-by-case basis.

Articles about stuff outside that fictional universe are excluded from this rule, as well as the sections Introduction, Other Media, Anime and Manga Differences, Trivia, and Gallery, and the use of the template see when needed.

Formality
Since this is an encyclopedia, we use a formal writing style. This means, for example, that we avoid the use of any contractions, such as "he's", "didn't" "could've" etc. Use the full forms "he is", "did not", "could have" instead.
 * "It's" is a contraction, and should not be used. "It's" is short for "it is" and is not the possessive of "it"; the possessive form of "it" is "its" with no apostrophe.

Neutrality
Use a neutral point of view when writing. Any opinion or bias should be expressed on the forum or in the respective Talk Page, not in the article itself.

American English or British English
We use only American English on this wiki, since the official translations of the manga and anime by Kodansha and Funimation respectively are provided in American English; plus Wikia is an American company which has its interface and documentation written in this localization of the language, and this wiki targets primarily an American audience.

Level of detail
Quantity does not mean quality, and not every detail is important. Articles should be written focused on the topic in question, extracting the relevant facts and avoiding unnecessary and unrelated information.


 * Articles about media (chapters, episodes, movies, etc) should cover all main events but in a summarized way, not literally descriptive. Not "he opens the door, he enters the room, he finds a person, first person says this, second person says this...", but "he finds some person and they talk about something".
 * In general for any page, transcribing literal conversations in the style of "this character says, that character responds" should be avoided, since just mentioning the topic is relevant in most cases. Only when it is really important to mention the words of a character or it can not be found a way to write the summary without using this style, this could be allowed; but this should be done as little as possible.
 * Articles about characters should focus on the actions of that character. Actions of third characters should be mentioned only when they directly involve the one of the topic and are relevant to the subject; but preferably should be told just quickly.

Presentation

 * Paragraphs should be short and to the point, preferably no more than 10 lines and ideally with at least a reference at the end and an illustrative image every few paragraphs (see Images and References below).
 * For deceased characters, do not reveal the details of their deaths in their introductions. The decease of a character can not be considered introductory information; and since the character statuses are included in their infoboxes and the deceased ones can be easily identified by the past tense writing of their articles, even mentioning that the character is dead in the introduction is irrelevant.

Wikitext

 * Use only simple wikitext in articles, avoid complex and unnecessary stuff like  Erwin Smith is the commander of the Survey Corps.  That is only allowed for templates (other tags like   are allowed to avoid squeezing in articles and only if they are strictly necessary).
 * Headers should be in the form == Header ==, not the form ==Header== . Also, lists and indentations should be in the form:


 * * Item
 * # Item
 * : item


 * And not in the form:


 * *Item
 * #Item
 * :item


 * Links like Eren and Female Titan are preferred over links with redirects like Eren and Female Titan.
 * For links that are possessive, put the "'s" outside the link. For example, use Ymir's instead of Ymir's.
 * All templates should always be put in new lines, unless they are specifically intended to be in the same line (like ref or dot). Also, the end tags ( }} ) of multiline templates like infoboxes should always be put in new lines as well. For instance, use:




 * And not:



Canon
The canon material is the content accepted as part of the same continuity of the original series, the manga.

Basically, only content made by series creator Hajime Isayama is accepted as canon, while derivative material from other authors is intended to take place in alternate continuities and therefore is considered non-canon; unless it is specifically adopted by Isayama into the main continuity.

Canon and Non-canon material
Canon


 * Original Attack on Titan manga
 * Guidebooks Inside Kou, Outside Osamu, and their official English version INSIDE & OUTSIDE
 * Attack on Titan: No Regrets manga (confirmed as canon as of chapter 76 of the main manga)
 * Statements by Isayama in other media (his blog, interviews, etc)

Non-canon


 * The rest of the media (including anime, OVAs, spin-offs, parodies, movies, novels, video games, etc).

Additionally, the canon sources are arranged according to the following hierarchy:


 * 1) Original Japanese manga by Kodansha Ltd.
 * 2) Official manga volumes by Kodansha USA
 * 3) Individual manga chapters by Kodansha USA
 * 4) Crunchyroll translation of the manga
 * 5) Scanlations

Treatment of the types of material
Since canon and non-canon works are understood as taking place in different continuities, they are treated separately, and are not included in articles outside their own universe.

If a canon element (character, object, organization...) appears also in a non-canon work, the corresponding information should not be mixed with the main continuity, but included in an "Other Media" section (usually put in a separate tab, unless the quantity of information does not warrant it).

Exceptions of this rule are:


 * Pictures from the anime can be used in pages about certain elements in common to the manga: characters, objects, locations and organizations; as long as they are equivalents of scenes found in canon material, have better quality than them and do not contradict them.
 * Events that happen both in manga and non-canon sources can be referenced in the main article, but only next to the corresponding manga reference.
 * Minor differences between manga and anime can be pointed out at the end of episodes pages, in a special section called "Anime and Manga Differences".
 * For purposes of writing quality, Hange Zoë's gender is always interpreted as female (see below).

Hange's gender
Hange Zoë is a character whose gender is depicted inconsistently within the universe of Attack on Titan. In the canon material, the character's gender is left up to the reader, while all other derivative works including the anime, parodies, movies, etc, have continuously depicted the character as female.

While the purpose of the  is to serve as a neutral source of official information, in order to fully accomplish this goal and do not interfere with the reader's interpretation of Hange's gender, it would be necessary to remove all images and videos from the derivative works where that character appears (except from articles specifically related to those works), and to use always neutral pronouns to refer to such character, resulting in confusing text and deprivation of useful material.

For these reasons, Hange's gender is always interpreted as female within the wiki, being an exception of the Canon Policy exclusive to this character.

Sources of names
All names are taken from the highest source available. The hierarchy of sources is the same seen in the Canon Policy, with the only exceptions being that we consider the official manga volumes by Kodansha USA as the highest source, since the original Japanese manga does not provide any English translation; and the official subtitled version of the anime by FUNimation takes priority over scanlations.

Names taken from a secondary source will be replaced if a higher source becomes available later. If no official name has been released, the page in question can still be made, but the name used must be as accurate as possible and the Unofficial Name template must be added.

Use of names

 * English translators usually spell names differently across several sources and this frequently causes confusions and disputes (for example, Eren's surname is spelled "Yeager" by Kodansha, "Jaeger" by FUNimation, "Jäger" in video games, etc). However, this problem comes solely from the side of the translators, since the original Japanese names are not usually changed. For this reason, we consider that while the Japanese name remains the same, there is no need to adopt different spellings, so we pick the translation given by the highest source and use it consistently within the wiki. Unless the original Japanese name is changed, the English spelling used will remain the same across all sources. However, this only applies for in-universe stuff. Titles of works should always be spelled according to the name used by the primary English distributor, or by the original author in case it provides an English spelling. For example, Kodansha's spelling for the inner wall is "Wall Sheena", but the fifth visual novel is titled Wall Sina, Goodbye. As the visual novel is an original work by Wit Studio and Production I.G and that is the spelling used by them even in the Japanese version, that is the official spelling we use to refer to such work; but if we are talking about the fictional building, then the name used should be "Wall Sheena".
 * Characters are referred by a single primary name, aliases are not used unless relevant to the context of the paragraph (ie: use "Eren", not "Suicidal Bastard").
 * All the versions of a name (English, Kanji, Romaji and alternate translations) and aliases should be listed in the infobox; and all of those, as well as some misspellings or shortened names, should be redirected to the page.
 * Titles of works like Attack on Titan, Before the Fall, Chibi Theatre, etc, should always be written in italics.

Usage in articles

 * Articles must only contain images from official sources; i.e. the manga, anime or any other official material coming from the author himself or the related companies.
 * Images should be of highest quality possible, without any heavy alteration of the size, colors and overall quality from the original source material. Every image that is of low quality should be reuploaded with a higher quality version or deleted in case of multiple image policy violations.
 * Images should be generally put to 200px size, unless they look too small or the space in the article or other circumstances not allow it.
 * The side of placement should alternate from left to right (or right to left, depends on the article organization).
 * The description of the image (in the thumbnail) should not be ended with a full stop.

Other aspects

 * Images from manga should be generally single frames and they should get rid of the borders unless doing this interferes with the content. Multiple frames or entire pages should be avoided unless a single frame is not enough to illustrate the intended action.
 * Screenshots from video sources (anime, movies, etc) must not include subtitles, while manga panels should be gotten rid of any text (from speech bubbles and from the image itself only if this does not damage the drawing).
 * Chapter covers should only be gotten rid of text within speech bubbles and leave the rest of the text intact.
 * Images should be added to every character's image category that appears in it. Example, if Eren and Sasha appear in an image, said image must be added to Images of Eren Yeager and Images of Sasha Blouse.
 * The image should also be added to the corresponding characters' image galleries unless there is another better version of the same image or from the same scene in there.
 * Manga images should be of Japanese RAW manga chapters unless the RAW version is of lower quality. Any other manga images should be tagged with the Needs Replacement by RAW category and reuploaded as such when possible.