CWCki:Operation Grammatification

Operation Grammatification is a task force started by chief grammarian and copy-editor User:Apostrophe. The objective is to improve the grammar, style and coherence of text on the Wiki; clear, coherent text is especially important, given that our main subject is a manchild known for his utter lack of coherence.

If you're not certain about how something looks, feel free to run it by Apostrophe for a once-over. Or take one of the tasks below:

Userbox

Members who contribute to this project are free to use this user box to their user page: {{GrammarNazi}} which produces

Grammar Nazi This user edits the CWCki to exterminate all typos and grammatical errors. HEIL GRAMMAR!

Tasks

Spelling and grammar check

• Any quotes directly from Chris are to be quoted as-is, ALLCAPS and spelling/grammar errors intact. There's not even a need for [sic] unless it's a very short quote; otherwise, there would be [sic]s all over the place.
• "It's" is short for "it is" or "it has." If you're not sure whether you should be using "its" or "it's," just try replacing it with "it is" and see if it still makes sense. If it doesn't, then you probably want "its."
• "However," when used to connect two phrases/clauses, should have a semicolon before it and a comma after. ("Blah blah blah; however, blah blah blah.")
• If you find two or more consecutive sentences beginning with the same word or phrase, try rephrasing one so that it begins with something different.
• "Y" does not change to "ie" when pluralizing proper names. Therefore, "My Little Ponys" is the proper plural. Similarly, Pokémon names are not pluralized; i.e., one Pikachu, two Pikachu.
• If you need an ellipsis, use either the ellipsis character "…" or three periods "..."; no more than three except the end of a sentence, which uses four. Similarly, use an em dash "—" instead of two hyphens "--", and don't forget the é when spelling words that use it. (Ellipsis is option-semicolon on the Mac; em dash is option-shift-hyphen, and é is option-e, then let go of option and hit another E. On Windows, special characters can be made by holding down alt, pressing a combination of keys on the keypad, and then releasing alt. é is alt+0233, — is alt+0151, and … is alt+0133.)
• Most browsers have spell checks. Don't be afraid to use them.
• Don't be afraid to double-check transcriptions, in case a spelling error happens to be the fault of the transcriber and not Chris.
• One space after punctuation. Not two or twelve.
• Don't be lazy and use words like "recently." If something happened, say when it happened, like "In June 2010, Chris blah blah blah."
• Don't make pothole links to lie or fail.

Proper wiki formatting

• The name of the article should be bolded at the beginning. '''Like this''', not [[like this]], because it's bad formatting to link an article to itself just to make the bolds. That, and if the article ends up moved, you then break the link-to-itself trick. This edit is a good example of why you use bolds and not brackets.
• With very few exceptions, don't wikilink to the same article more than once or twice in an article. Linking every instance of the same word is overkill, especially if that word is Chris; we all know the subject of this wiki, so we don't need a million links to remind us. If you feel a need to make it clear that you're talking about comic Chris or real-life Chris, then write carefully to avoid any ambiguity.
• There shouldn't be any reason to use the HTML line-break tag, <br>. If you want to keep images and other floating elements (images) from overlapping, use {{clear}} ^(Usage).
• For that matter, there shouldn't be use for any other HTML tags. Strikeout gags aren't funny, so don't use strikeout unless you're quoting something that has struck-out text. If you want italics, use two tick marks ''; for bold, three.
• There also shouldn't be any reason to use ALLCAPS unless quoting or paraphrasing Chris, or if the article name is in all-caps (e.g. DIRTY, CRAPPED BRIEFS). Also, LEGO Bricks or LEGO Blocks is the proper name of the building blocks.
• Images should generally be on the right, unless there's no room to put them there. If an article requires several images, try alternating them or the [edit] tabs will all end up bunched up at the bottom.
• A quick way to make a link to a plural: [[Plural]]s, which saves you from having to pipe the link. The same goes for any other suffix you can think of adding, such as [[add]]ing.
• References go after punctuation.
• If the name of an article begins with an article (a, an or the), or with a punctuation mark (e.g. /cwc/), use a DEFAULTSORT template so that it's sorted by whatever follows the article or punctuation mark. For instance, A Girl Who Brought Down the World has {{DEFAULTSORT:Girl Who Brought Down the World}} so that it's indexed under G for "Girl." /cwc/ should be sorted under C.
  • Similarly, use defaultsort templates so that full names of people are sorted by their last name. For instance, Mary Lee Walsh should be default-sorted as "Walsh, Mary Lee" so that it appears under "W" in categories.
• Don't link a bunch of adjacent words. This makes it too confusing to figure out that you've actually got several links next to each other.