Wikipedia:Manual of Style
A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic, balancing the criteria of being natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles.
Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: Berberis darwinii, Erithacus rubecula superbus, Acacia coriacea subsp.
This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: bird of prey, oak, great apes, Bryde's whales, livestock guardian dog, poodle, Van cat, wolfdog.
[2] Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and artworks).
The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, storylines, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks.
Use italics for the scientific names of plants, animals, and all other organisms except viruses at the genus level and below (italicize Panthera leo and Retroviridae, but not Felidae).
While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, excessive use of them is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style and may be copyright infringement, so most of the content should be in the editor's own words.
For the sake of accuracy and indexing, the titles of referenced sources should not be corrected for spelling, but minor typographic adjustments (like changing curly quotes to straight) may be made silently.
Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words such as supposedly or so-called, might be inferred.
These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud, for example: See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles § Typographic conformity for special considerations in normalizing the typography of titles of works.
The source must be named in article text if the quotation is an opinion (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Attributing and specifying biased statements).
Format a long quote (more than about forty words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, indented on both sides.
Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite: Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, though this should never alter the intended meaning.
Another exception are periodical publications carrying both, issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss.
For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in s, add 's (my daughter's achievement, my niece's wedding, Cortez's men, the boss's office, Illinois's largest employer, the US's partners, Descartes's philosophy, Verreaux's eagle).
To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using I, my, we, us, our, or similar words: We note that some believe that bats are bugs.
Some collective nouns – such as team (and proper names of them), army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party – may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it.
In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is that when a sports team is referred to by its short name, plural verbs are commonly used, e.g. the Heat are playing the Lakers tonight.
Always use present tense for verbs that describe genres, types, and classes, even if the subject of the description (e.g. program, library, device) no longer exists, is discontinued, is unsupported or is unmaintained.
This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works (The Ascent of Man), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (When any student breaks that rule, she loses privileges).
References to space programs, past, present and future, should use gender-neutral phrasing: human spaceflight, robotic probe, uncrewed mission, crewed spacecraft, piloted, unpiloted, astronaut, cosmonaut, not manned or unmanned.
Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place.
Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: Note that this was naturally subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers.
Proper names in languages written using the Latin alphabet can include letters with diacritics, ligatures, and other characters that are not commonly used in contemporary English.
For a non-English name, phrase, or word, adopt the spelling most commonly used in English-language reliable sources, including but not limited to those already cited in the article.
Excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) can result from trying too hard to avoid putting explanations in parenthetical statements, like the one that appeared earlier in this sentence.
For example, consider adding a brief background section with {{main}} tags pointing to articles with a fuller treatment of the prerequisite material.
Capitalize the first letter only where this is naturally called for, or when specifically referring to the linked article by its name (see also related rule for italics in cross-references): Snakes are often venomous, but lizards only rarely (see Poison).
If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all.
(Links to policy and guidelines on specific questions) Wikipedians are encouraged to familiarize themselves with modern editions of other guides to style and usage, which may cover details not included here.
