Manual of Style

This page contains the Manual of Style for the English Amnesia wiki. The Manual of Style contains the set of standards for writing and formatting which we aim for when it comes to writing and editing pages on the wiki.

The aim of the Manual of Style is to provide a set of rules that ensure clarity, coherence, and consistency within all pages on the wiki, for the purpose of creating an encyclopaedia on the Amnesia series that is as accessible to its readers as possible.

The Manual of Style also contains some general tutorials on how certain important templates and similar should be used, as well as provide links for the relevant information and how-to guides within the Help pages.

This page is still under construction.

Perspective

As this wiki is dedicated to the documentation of both the lore of the world of the Amnesia series, and the out-of-universe story of the development of the games, it is important to know when, and how, to write from an in-universe perspective, and when to avoid that in favour of speaking from an out-of-universe perspective.

In-universe

When documenting in-game events, characters, locations etc., the language should follow an in-universe perspective. This means, writing as if those events actually occurred, and those characters and locations actually existed – in other words, as if these subjects were non-fictional rather than fictional.

This entails:

• Using the historical past tense when referring to characters:

  Under conventional grammar rules, plot summaries for fictional works are written in the literary present tense. Because we imagine the Amnesia world to be that of reality, however, even fictional characters who have since died in the story (e.g. Oswald Mandus) are treated as actually having existed at one point before passing away. When writing about them, they should therefore be described in the past tense.
  
  It is important, however, to learn to distinguish between in-universe and out-of-universe language – for instance, "Daniel was an archaeology student who came into the possession of an Orb" is in-universe language, and therefore uses past tense. But "Daniel is the protagonist of Amnesia: The Dark Descent" is out-of-universe language, and therefore does not use the past tense. Certain pages may also include information related to game development and alike, which of course, also shouldn't use in-universe language.

• Generally, the current year (2024) is also to be seen as the current year within the games' universe:

  This means, that even if a character does not explicitly die within a game, the historical past tense is still used, as they usually can't logically speaking be alive during 2024 considering most of the games taking place in the distant past.

• Avoiding gameplay language and speculation:

Gameplay language

Writing from an in-universe perspective when describing gameplay requires more than just avoiding explicit references to the subject's fictional status. For instance;

"Daniel's sanity would drop if he looked directly at a Gatherer. He could hide and avoid looking at them, but if he was spotted by one, he would have to run away from it."

While the historical past tense is correct in this example, the use of it here comes off as stunted and awkward to readers. Writing with correct tense usage requires capturing the point-of-view with respect to the content and the rhetoric, and while this sentence isn't technically out-of-universe, it is still to be written from an out-of-universe perspective, as the point it is making makes more sense as a matter of describing gameplay mechanics. Here is a more appropriate way of phrasing the idea:

"Looking directly at a Gatherer causes Daniel's sanity to decrease, making hiding from them and avoiding looking their way imperative to maintain it. However, if a Gatherer spots him, running away from it becomes the best option."

Always keep this in mind when writing – try to read your writing several times, and see if what you've written is fluent and sufficiently distinguishes between these tenses in a way that makes sense and is intuitive to a reader.

Avoiding speculation

See also: AW:SPECULATION

The purpose of the Amnesia wiki is first and foremost meant for documentation of the lore of the Amnesia series. This means that speculation and personal theories do not belong in the articles – they should be kept to the comments, blog posts, or in discussions with other community members on, for instance, the Frictional Games' Discord.

Exceptions to this rule include:

• To point out widely accepted fan-canon that can be backed up using in-universe documentation, but is nevertheless never made explicitly canon (Examples of this include "Alexander's wine turned Wilhelm into a Gatherer", or "The girl Daniel killed in the Storage was Elise Zimmermann from the Waiting for the Rain short story").
• That of in-game texts and characters – for instance, Alexander's explanation on what The Shadow is, may or may not be correct in an absolute sense, and may very well be speculation, but his view on The Shadow should nevertheless be included in the page as he is, no matter how dubious his accounts may be, one of few in-universe sources of information.

In-universe citations

When a claim is made about the universe, it should be backed up using a citation. This is done using the <ref> tag. This citation should point to a source within the wiki, as all dialogue, documents, recordings, and other texts are documented. For instance, if one were to write about Daniel getting trapped in an Algerian tomb, one could use a scrap from his diary to do so, which is documented on the page Daniel's diary.

To reference an appropriate page in his diary, we simply provide a link to the correct section and surround it with <ref> tags, as seen in the following example:

During his trip to Algeria, Daniel got trapped within a tomb.<ref>TDD: [[Daniel's diary#17th of May 1839|Daniel's diary – 17th of May 1839]]</ref>

– where the "Daniel's diary" part of the link redirects to the correct page and the "#17th of May 1839" part redirects to the correct section of the page. The ''Daniel's diary – 17th of May 1839'' part replaces this link with this line of text, written in italics. This isn't necessary but recommended, as it makes the reference section look cleaner and makes it easier to navigate. Providing further information than this, such as the date the link was retrieved, is not necessary when creating an in-universe citation.

The whole section between the <ref> tags will become replaced with a superscripted number that forwards the user to a section at the bottom of the page where the full tag will be listed as a footnote. This section is added by creating a heading titled "References" at the end of the article, and then using the {{Reflist}} template immediately beneath it – all footnotes will be added automatically.

The above example would yield the following in the reflist:

• TDD: Daniel's diary – 17th of May 1839

Out-of-universe

An out-of-universe perspective is the opposite of an in-universe perspective. When writing from an out-of-universe perspective, one does not write as if the events of the Amnesia universe are non-fictional, but are rather writing about the subject as one would any other subject within the real world.

While in-universe perspective takes precedence, when writing about subjects such as the developers, game development, the voice actors, the games themselves, or other similar subjects, out-of-universe perspective is to be used.

Furthermore, most in-universe pages contain sections which are to be written from an out-of-universe perspective. The most notable of these is the Trivia section found at the bottom of each page, which contain some informal interesting facts and tidbits about the subject, which may include facts about the universe, about gameplay, or else.

Out-of-universe citations

See also: Amnesia Wiki:Rules § Sourcing

When providing citations for out-of-universe claims, such as those related to game development or alike, providing citations in the correct form is more important, and is required in accordance with AW:CITE. These citations should, in general, be structured in the following way:

1. A link to the page and/or section you are citing, with its title in place of the link itself (by including a space between the link and the title – for instance, [https://frictionalgames.com/2020-09-amnesia-is-now-open-source/ ''Amnesia is now open source!'' – Frictional Games] gives Amnesia is now open source! – Frictional Games).
2. The name of the author(s), if applicable.
3. The site the material is hosted on.
4. If the link is an archived webpage, the date when the citation was archived.
5. The date the citation was created.

Titles, headings, and sections

Article titles

A title should always be an easily recognisable and natural name of the topic. It also needs to be consistent with related articles.

Naming conventions

Observe the following rules when naming an article; in order:

1. Use a canonical name, if possible.
2. Use the legal name of an individual whenever possible; omitting titles, honorifics, and epithets. Usually, the legal name includes a persons first name and family name, but omits any middle names and affixes, but these conventions may be different depending on the person' national origins. (e.g. Oswald Mandus).
3. If no canonical legal name is known, use a canonical common name (e.g. Daniel). Sometimes, it may be appropriate to title the page using a person's nickname, if they're almost exclusively referred to by the nickname rather than their full name (as is the case with Tasi Trianon and Hank Mitchell). In these cases, the persons full, legal name (including middle names) should be included in the lead section (in boldface).
4. If no canonical common name is known, use a canonical nickname (e.g. Professor A). Such articles should include the {{Nickname}} template at the top of the page to make this clear. This is only if the person is exclusively known by a nickname, not if a legal name is known but a person is referred to by a nickname (as discussed in the previous point).
5. If the subject has a real-life equivalent, use their real full name. In-game take precedence – this means that the Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa page would only be titled as Agrippa if the case was that he never introduced himself using his full name in-game.
6. If none of these rules applies, devise a conjectural name and include the {{Conjecture}} template at the start of the page. The conjectural name should be one that can be rationally identified with a subject – such as Justine's brother or Alexander's beloved – rather than Unnamed character or similar.

Title format

See also: Help:Renaming pages

When writing the title to an article, note the following rules regarding how it should be formatted:

• Titles should always be written in English, with the Latin character set (a-z and modifiers). Names should generally be anglicised if possible (e.g. Alexander of Brennenburg instead of Alexander von Brennenburg).
  • An exception to this is if the anglicised version isn't conventionally used, either in-game or by the community (e.g. Monsieur Florbelle instead of Mr. Florbelle).
• The initial letter should always be capitalised.
• The second, or any subsequent words, should not be capitalised (e.g. Developer commentary, not Developer Commentary) unless the title is a proper name (e.g Oswald Mandus).
• If it's the title of a work or organisation, each word takes an initial capital (e.g., Mandus Processing Company), except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, and prepositions and conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle (e.g. Order of the Black Eagle instead of Order of the black eagle or Order Of The Black Eagle). However, the last word is always capitalised when writing in title case. See Manual of Style – Capitalisation.
• It should not use an abbreviated version of the full name (e.g. Mandus Processing Company instead of Mandus Co) unless the abbreviation is an inseparable part of the name (e.g. HPL Engine instead of Howard Phillips Lovecraft Engine), or the subject is better known by the abbreviation than their full name (as is the case with H. P. Lovecraft). If the abbreviation is an acronym, standard acronym rules apply and all characters in the acronym should be capitalised (e.g., HPL Engine instead of Hpl Engine).
• It should not contain a person's honorifics or titles (e.g., Thurston Herbert instead of Professor Herbert) unless their real name is unknown and they're only known by a nickname that includes honorifics(e.g., Monsieur Florbelle, Professor A).
• It should normally use singular rather than plural case (e.g., Tinderbox instead of Tinderboxes), unless the subject is plurale tantum (e.g. "scissors", "pants"), or its subject matter discusses a class or group (e.g., Gatherers, Manpigs, Notes).
• It should normally use nouns or noun phrases.
• It should not use A, An, or The as the first word (e.g., Order of the Black Eagle and HPL Engine instead of The Order of the Black Eagle and The HPL Engine) unless it is an inseparable part of the name (The Shadow) or the title of a work (The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs).
• The final character should not be punctuation unless it is an inseparable part of the name or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (e.g., Notes (The Dark Descent)).
• If the title is the title of a work (be it a book, game, movie, tv-series, painting, etc.), the title should be italicised by placing the {{Italic title}} template somewhere in the article, usually at the bottom. If the title contains the title of a work, use the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic word instead to define what part you want italicised (for instance; {{DISPLAYTITLE:''Remember'' (short story collection)}} would be used to only italicise the Remember part of the title for the article Remember (short story collection)).

Redirects

See also: Help:Redirect

Sometimes, one may want to redirect a viewer to the correct page, or simply make linking to or accessing a certain page simpler. We use redirect pages for that.

To turn a page into a redirect page, the content of the page should be replaced with:

#REDIRECT [[Link]]

Where "[[Link]]" contains the title of the article you want to redirect to.

Redirects are often used to make navigation simpler – for instance; both the page at Oswald and the page at Mandus redirects to Oswald Mandus. This makes so that linking to either is fine – one doesn't have to use the exact full name to guide readers to the correct page.

Other examples:

• Alexander redirects to Alexander of Brennenburg
• Agrippa redirects to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
• Weyer redirects to Johann Weyer
• Tasi redirects to Tasi Trianon

It might be good practice to create pages linking to any alternative versions of an article once you've created a page.

Disambiguation

See also: Help:Template types § Context-link

Sometimes two or more articles may end up with very similar or identical, competing titles.

There are two ways to resolve a situation such as this:

• Through the use of a disambiguation page
• Through the use of a hatnote

A disambiguation page is a landing page for a subject that contain links with descriptions for all the articles with similar names. For instance, the page at Justine redirects to a disambiguation page which contains links to both the expansion Amnesia: Justine and the character Justine Florbelle.

Note that a disambiguation page should always contain "(disambiguation)" in its title, directly after what it is a disambiguation page for, and the name without "(disambiguation)" in the title should typically be a redirect to the diambiguation page. A disambiguation page should also always contain the {{disambig}} template at the top of the page, to group the page into the disambiguation category, and to notify anyone who lands on it of the page's purpose.

To further increase clarity when it comes to navigating between similarly-named pages, we use hatnotes. A hatnote is a short notice placed at the start of a page or a section, that suggest another page that is related to the current page or section. For example, these hatnotes may be {{main}}, which links the reader to the main page on a subject, or {{see also}}, which links the reader to a relevant page.

The hatnote used for disambiguation on articles is called {{about}}. This is a simple, yet flexible, template, which tells the user what page they have landed on, and if there are similarly named pages they may have been intending to find instead. It can also link to a disambiguation page, where finding what they're searching for might be easier.

An example of this in action is the Notes (The Dark Descent) page, which contains the following code at the start of the article (with line breaks added for clarity):

{{about
|the '''notes''' [[Daniel]] can find around [[Brennenburg Castle]]
|his diary entries
|Daniel's diary
|the notes found in [[Amnesia: Justine]]
|Notes (Justine)
|other uses
|Notes (disambiguation)
}}

This results in the following at the start of the article:

This page is about the notes Daniel can find around Brennenburg Castle. For his diary entries, see Daniel's diary. For the notes found in Amnesia: Justine, see Notes (Justine). For other uses, see Notes (disambiguation).

This links the reader to similarly-named topics that they may have been looking for instead. This includes the diary entries from the same game, the notes from Amnesia: Justine, as well as the disambiguation page for notes, which provide links for more similar pages.

Section organisation & layout

Every wiki article is divided into sections, which are further divided into paragraphs. This increases the readability of the article. There are generally three major main sections per article:

1. The lead – The lead section or introduction is the section ahead of the table of contents and first paragraph. This section introduces the subject and summarises the articles most important contents.
2. Main body – This is where the main information of the article goes, divided into multiple sections.
3. Appendices – After the main content comes the appendices and end matter. This includes among other things, the work and publications section for biographies, trivia section, further reading, and references.

Lead section

The lead is the first thing most people will read when visiting an article. It is therefore important that it is written in a clear and concise way, that it establishes what the subject is, and that it summarises the most important parts of the article. As a general rule of thumb, the lead should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs.

Before the lead section, there are several templates that might be appropriate to apply to the page. A good and complete lead section should have the following, in order:

1. Notices – These explain the status of the article, if there are any issues with it and alike.

   Notices include: {{Audio needed}} – If the page needs audio files added. {{Badimage}} – If the page has a low quality image. {{Cleanup}} – If the page needs cleaning. {{Conjecture}} – If the title is conjecture. {{Deadend}} – If the page in question has no links. {{Delete}} – Nominate the page for deletion. {{Ibid}} – If the page references contains ibid or similar. {{Image needed}} – If the page needs images. {{Infobox incomplete}} – If the infobox is incomplete. {{Infobox needed}} – If the page lacks an infobox. {{Merge}} – Nominate the page for merging. {{Missing data}} – If a template lacks data. {{Multiple issues}} – If the page has multiple issues.

   {{Nickname}} – If the title is a nickname. {{Orphan}} – If the page has no links to it from other pages. {{Section}} – If a section on a page is missing (more often used at the start of a heading rather than at the top of pages). {{Split}} – Nominate the page for splitting. {{Spoiler}} – If the page contains spoilers for Rebirth. {{Stub}} – If the page is a stub. {{Underlinked}} – If the page needs more wikilinks. {{Unreleased}} – If the page is about cut content. {{Upcoming}} – If the page is about upcoming content. {{Update}} – If the information on the page is outdated, and as such needs updating. {{Wikify}} – If the page needs to be wikified.

2. An infobox with an image, or if not applicable, only the image with description.

   Infoboxes include:

   • {{Infobox game}} for a page about a game.
   • {{Infobox album}} for a page about a soundtrack or album.
   • {{Infobox character}} for a page about a character.
   • {{Infobox location}} for a page about a location.
   • {{Infobox monster}} for a page about a monster/creature.
   • {{Infobox item}} for a page about an item.
   • {{Infobox studio}} for a page about a game studio.
   • {{Infobox achievement}} for a page about an achievement/trophy.

3. Hatnotes – More specifically, the {{about}} or {{for}} hatnote may be utilised if the page needs disambiguation.
4. If the page is an in-universe page, especially if it's a character or location page, it may be appropriate to put a quote by the character or about the location here, right before the actual lead section. This is done using the {{quote}} template.
5. The lead section, in full.
6. The table of content, which is added automatically as further headings are added. This marks the end of the lead section.

Main body

The main body of an article follows the lead section and table of contents. This is where the main content of the article goes, organised by headings and paragraphs, which is what populates the table of contents as long as the page has four or more headings and/or subheadings. Very short sections do not warrant their own subheadings, as this only serves to clutter an article. The main body should also be interspersed with images that are relevant to the text.

As the contents of the main body can be pretty diverse, there is no general standard for the layout or order of the sections within it, only general guidelines that are established by consensus:

• Usual practise is to order the sections based on the precedence set by similar articles – e.g., any article related to a character within the Amnesia universe should structure the bodies of their articles similarly.
• Generally, information about a topic should be structured so that it follows the subject chronologically. This means that an article about a character might start with a heading titled "Early life", and end with a heading titled "Death and legacy". Looking to how Wikipedia structures their articles is always a good start if you're feeling lost.
• If a section is a summary of a topic that has a main page, it should include the {{main}} tophat at the start of the section, redirecting readers to the full article.
• If a section has a related topic that the reader may want to visit for further reading, it should include the {{see also}} tophat at the start of the section.
• If a section is needed but hasn't been written yet, the heading for it should be created and be immediately followed by the {{section}} notice.

Following are some examples of good ways to structure pages within certain categories. Note that a page may contain all or very few of these suggested sections:

         Games – Hit Expand on the right >

 

• Gameplay – Describes the main game mechanics and gameplay loops.
• Plot – Describes the plot of the game, and how it ties into the other games in the series. May link to another page which goes more in-depth on the plot.
  • Setting – Introduces the universe, the main story beats, and how the story ties into the other games in the series.
  • Storyline – Summarises the main plot of the game, from beginning to end.
  • Characters – Briefly summarise the main characters in the game.
  • Locations – Briefly describes where the game takes place and provides further reading in the form of links to pages for the levels of the game.
  • DLC storyline – If applicable, summarises the setting and plot of any DLC campaigns for the game.
• Development – Describes the process of the games' development, along with its ports and related content. May link to another page which goes more in-depth on the development of the game. This section can also be divided into multiple subsections:
  • Design – Describes the general design and design ideas of the game.
  • Writing – Describes the writing and its process.
  • Programming – Describes the programming and its process.
  • Voice cast – Lists voice actors and describes the voice acting process.
  • Music – Lists composer(s), lists the soundtrack, describes the development of the soundtrack.
• Release – Describes the marketing, media response, and hype around the game.
  • Announcement – Describes the announcement of the game and the response to it.
  • Marketing – Describes the marketing for the game. Including a timeline of teasers, trailers, etc. May link to another page, going further in-depth.
  • Additional and downloadable content – If applicable, briefly describes DLC's or expansions for the game, and provides links with the pages regarding that content. Also describes the announcement of said materials.
• Reception – Details how the game was received by various media outlets and publications. Also includes a table (infobox) with review scores.
  • Pre-release – Describes media and public opinion pre-release.
  • Post-release – Describes media and public opinion post-release.
  • Awards – If applicable, describes awards the game or developers won or was nominated for.
  • Sales – Describes sales numbers across platforms.
• Mods – If applicable, describes the modding scene along with popular mods.
• Trivia
• Gallery – Includes box art, marketing images, etc.
• Video – Includes trailers and teasers.
• References

         Characters – Hit Expand on the right >

 

• Early life – Describes place of birth, childhood, general backstory. For Daniel, this would explain his bully at school, his abusive father, his nyctophobia, his sister, and his studies.
• Events of [Game, important event, or short story A] – Describes the events leading up to and that occurred in the game or short story they are a part of.
  • Further subheadings might be required in these parts, to break the characters exploits into more easily digestible chunks – for example, on Daniel's page, this might be: "Arrival in Brennenburg", followed by "Kidnappings", followed by "Waking up with amnesia", followed by "Capture" – Something like that)
• Events of [Game, important event, or short story B] – This is repeated for every piece of official Amnesia-universe game, story, or important event the character is a part of. In Daniel's case, this could be "Trip to Algeria", which would include the events of Old Friends, and everything up until embarking on the ship back to England, followed by "Examining the Orb", which would detail the events up until Daniel decides to travel to Brennenburg; followed by "Events of The Outrider", followed by "Events of Amnesia: The Dark Descent", which is a section that would probably, as stated before, be split into several subheadings.
• Death and/or legacy – Would describe the character's demise, if they are dead, and explain how their actions and life might have affected other in-universe stuff. For instance, in Daniel's case, his potential relation to Oswald Mandus would be mentioned here.
• Personality and characteristics – Describes the characters personality, motivations, characteristics, etc.
• Quotes
• Trivia – You know what this is. Fun facts and alike.
• Gallery
• Video
• References

         Monsters – Hit Expand on the right >

 

• Description – Describes the monster's appearance, behaviour, and effects on the player character & gameplay.
• Origins – Describes how the monster came to be in-universe. Includes folklore, and how the monsters are described by characters in-game.
• Appearances – Describes the various encounters with the monster in-game and in-universe.
• Sound – Describes the monster's theme music (with playable audio), and sound effects.
• Design – Retells Frictional Games' descriptions on creating the monster in question, if applicable.
• Trivia
• Gallery
• Video
• References

         Locations – Hit Expand on the right >

• Information – General info about how the area looks, how it is built, its atmosphere, how dangerous it is, etc.
• Points of interest – Lists interesting or important features of the location, such as NPC's, unique structures, story-related stuff.
• Walkthrough – Explains how to traverse the area safely, while gathering the necessary items and solving the puzzles.
• Collectibles – Lists all items in the locale. Tinderboxes, oil, notes, etc.
• Trivia
• Gallery
• Video
• References

         Real people – Hit Expand on the right >

• Early life
• Career
• Involvment with game
• Personal life
• Works – Games or other forms of entertainment they've had a hand in creating.
• Awards – Awards gained from their art.
• References

Paragraphs

A section should be further divided into paragraphs, between which – as between sections – there should be only a single blank line. First lines are not indented. Bullet points should generally be avoided in the body, unless for breaking up a mass of text, particularly if the topic requires significant effort to comprehend.

The number of single-sentence paragraphs should be minimised since they can inhibit the flow of the text. Similarly, paragraphs that exceed a certain length can also be tiring to read, so it's important to strike a balance when it comes to the length and number of paragraphs that make the article both look nice, and be easy to read.

Appendices

After the main body of the text follows the appendices. These are usually structured as lists, offering the viewers an easy overview of some of the important features of the article or the subject of the article, but can also include a relevant gallery or videos.

This section might contain, in order

1. Works or publications (for biographies only, under a section heading "Works, "Publications", "Discography", etc., as appropriate)
2. Trivia section
3. Gallery
4. Videos
5. See also – internal links to related articles
6. Notes
7. References
8. Further reading or external links – relevant websites that haven't been used as sources
9. Navboxes
10. Interwiki links to the corresponding article in any of the other language Amnesia wikis (these being the Finnish language Amnesia Wiki, Russian language Amnesia Wiki, and Spanish language Amnesia Wiki) if applicable (done by adding tags [[fi:<title>]], [[ru:<title>]], and/or [[es:<title>]] to the article, respectively)
11. Categories

Section headings

The section headings should follow the guidance for article titles, and be presented in sentence case rather than title case (e.g., Early life rather than Early Life). Sections are separated by a single line-break, similarly to paragraphs.

Headings follow a six-level hierarchy, defined by the number of equal signs on either side of the heading. These start at level two (==Heading 2==), and end at level six (======Heading 6======), but only headings up to level four (====Heading 4====) are displayed in the table of contents. These headings are to be used in order when creating sections and sub-sections, with no level skipped.

Note that the first heading, =Heading 1=, is reserved for the title and never used in the body of an article. Adding spaces around the title (== Such as this ==) is optional, and are ignored when the page is rendered but is often done to increase the legibility of the page when editing in source mode.

Note the following rules when writing a section heading to avoid technical complications:

• The heading should be unique within a page, so it can be linked to properly.
• It should not contain links, images, or icons.
• It should not contain citations or footnotes.
• It should not misuse description list markup (";") to create pseudo-headings.

In addition, the following rules should also be followed, as a matter of attaining a consistent style:

• The heading should not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article (e.g., Early life, not Daniel's early life).
• It should not use colours or unusual fonts.
• In normal text and headings, use and instead of the ampersand (&), unless it is part of a proper noun.
• It should not be numbered or lettered as an outline.
• It should not be phrased as a question (e.g., List of orbs, not How many orbs are there?).
• It should not refer back to a higher-level heading unless doing so is shorter and/or clearer.
• It should not be wrapped in markup.

National varieties of English

Amnesia Wiki accepts two varieties of English: American English and British English. These variants may use different vocabulary (lift vs elevator), spelling (colour vs color), and formatting (21 June vs June 21). The most important thing to remember regarding this is that, regardless of your chosen variant of English, only one variety is to be maintained within a single article. It is not appropriate to switch back and forth between formats within articles.

It should also be noted that:

• Quotes, notations, and titles of works should always be left as-is, no matter what variety is used in the rest of the article.
• Proper names use the subject's own spelling.
• Some national varieties may not be widely distributed, and shouldn't be used ahead of their more universally accepted counterparts (e.g., glasses or eyeglasses (American English) should be used ahead of spectacles (British English).
• If one variant spelling appears in a title, make a redirect to accommodate the alternative spelling (e.g., Lift redirects to Elevator, which is preferentially used as the title as Elevator is the term used for the location within the game files).

Capitalisation

The following summarises when and how to use capital letters. The general rule is that something should not be capitalised unless it is capitalised in most other sources – this means that the most common occurrence of capital letters outside of the beginning of sentences is in the titles of works, and for the names of certain institutions, philosophies, religions, sects and alike when presented in a formal context.

All article titles and section headings should be written in sentence case as opposed to title case unless the heading is itself or contains the title of a work, in which case the title of the work should be written in title case as well as be rendered in italics (See: Manual of style: Italics).

• The following should always be capitalised in the title of a work:
  • The first and last words of the title
  • Every adjective, adverb, noun, pronoun, and subordinating conjunction (Me, It, His, If, etc.)
  • Every verb, including forms of to be (Be, Am, Is, Are, Being, Was, Were, Been)
  • Prepositions that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, Below, Under, etc.)
  • Particles of phrasal verbs
  • The first word in a compound preposition
• The following should never be capitalised in the title of a work:
  • Indefinite and definite articles (a, an, the)
  • Short coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor; as well as for, yet, and so when used as conjunctions)
  • Prepositions containing four letters or fewer (as, in, of, on, to, for, from, into, like, over, with, upon, etc.)
  • The word to in infinitives
• For titles of works with no English title, retain the style of the original work.
• The title of a person uses lowercase in generic use (Alexander was a Prussian baron), but begin with a capital letter when directly juxtaposed with the person's name (Baron Alexander rather than baron Alexander).
• Religions, sects, and churches, as well as their followers and their religious texts, start with a capital letter (Mithraism; the Mithraic faith; the Bible, the Quran).
• Honorifics for deities and religious figures, including proper names and titles, start with a capital letter (God, the Lord, Allah, the Holy Ghost, the Prophet, the Messiah). Common nouns for deities are not capitalised (several gods, saints, prophets).
• Pronouns for figures of veneration or worship are not capitalised, even if capitalised in a religion's scriptures, except for when directly quoting a text that does.
• Categories of mythical or legendary beings start with lower-case letters, unless referring to a specific group within a work of fiction that uses a capital letter for the group of beings (e.g., the term manpig would not use a capital letter when used generally to any such creature within myths or fiction; however when referring to the specific group of creatures from Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, it should take a capital letter).
• Philosophies, theories, movements, and doctrines use lower case (capitalism, socialism) unless the name derives from a proper name (Marxism, Georgism).
• The word the should not be capitalised mid-sentence (e.g., throughout the Cabinet of Perturbation, not throughout The Cabinet of Perturbation). Exceptions include as part of certain proper names and most titles of creative works that has the as the first word in it.
• Months, weekdays, and holidays take a capital letter (October, Monday, Halloween), but seasons do not (summer, spring, autumn, winter).
• Generic names for celestial bodies do not take capital letters (sun, earth, moon, star, solar system, galaxy, comet), but proper names for celestial bodies do (e.g., the Moon orbits the Earth, similarly to how Io is a moon that orbits Jupiter), as well as personifications of celestial bodies (e.g., The iconic scenes of Mithras show him being born from a rock, slaughtering a bull, and sharing a banquet with the god Sol (the Sun)).
• Common names for animals, plants, and other organisms are given in lowercase, but scientific names and standardised breeds take an initial capital letter.
• Compass points are not capitalised (north, south, east, west), unless part of a proper name (the South Pole).
• Names for particular institutions or organisations take a capital letter (the University of London) but not generic words for institutions (Daniel lived close to the university).

Abbreviations

• The first time an abbreviation is used within an article, it should be introduced using the full expression.
• An abbreviation is pluralised by adding -s or -es
• An abbreviation may or be terminated with a full stop (Dr. Victor Fournier, Mr. Mandus, the U.K.) or leave it out, as long as consistency is maintained within the article.
• Do not invent new abbreviations – always use widely recognised ones.
• The <abbr> element can be used for abbreviations and acronyms: <abbr title="The Dark Descent">TDD</abbr> will generate TDD; hovering over the rendered text causes a tooltip of the long form to pop up.

Emphasis

Italics are used for emphasis rather than boldface or CAPITALS on most occasions. Italics can be applied either by using ''double apostrophes'', or by the use of the <em>...</em> tags. Boldface can be applied by using '''triple apostrophes'''.

Italics

When to use italics:

• For titles of works (Amnesia: The Dark Descent)
• When a word, letter, character, or string of words up to one sentence long is mentioned rather than being used in prose (e.g., "The term amnesia is derived from late 18th century Greek, meaning 'forgetfulness'"). This is different from quoting, which uses quotation marks rather than italics.
• For words or phrases in foreign languages that are uncommon in English (e.g., "the sign to the Rare books room in the Brennenburg Castle archives is labelled Libri Rari"), unless it is a proper name or not using the Latin script.
• For proper names of ships, aircraft, or trains (such as the SS Hortensia or the Cassandra).
• Other than this, usage of italics for emphasis is up to the discretion of the writer.

What to keep in mind when using italics:

• Do not italicise any punctuation that might be surrounding the emphasis.
• Do not use italics for quotations.
• When using italics in combination with a link, it must be either completely outside of the link markup, or in the piped portion of the link (''[[Cassandra]]'' rather than [[''Cassandra'']]; [[Notes (The Dark Descent)|Notes (''The Dark Descent'')]] rather than [[Notes (''The Dark Descent'')]].

Boldface

When to use boldface:

• The most common use of boldface is to highlight the first occurrence of the title word/phrase in the lead section of an article.
• At the first occurrence of a term that redirects to the article or one of its subsections, whether the term appears in the lead or not.

Quotations

Generally, a wiki editor should strive to write an article using their own words – but as we are working to document a fictional universe by sticking to using sources found within the universe itself, using quotes from the in-game dialogue or documents often becomes necessary.

This is an indispensable part of any wiki project, but should nevertheless be used with discretion. You may consider paraphrasing quotations into plain and concise text whenever appropriate.

Many articles on the wiki, especially those related to a character or location, start off with a blockquote, rendered using the {{quote}} template. The purpose of this is to introduce the motivations and/or personality of a character, or the purpose of a location, in a short yet stylish way.

Faithful reproduction

The wording of quoted text should be faithfully reproduced, and verifiably attributed using a citation. This is called the principle of minimal change. If there exists good reason to change the wording of a quote, the changed part should be [bracketed] to note this.

• Correct: "As Daniel wanders the Nave, he is contacted by Alexander who tells him that "[he] has gone too far" and that "[he'll] have to stop [him]"
• Incorrect: "As Daniel wanders the Nave, he is contacted by Alexander who tells him that "Daniel has gone too far" and that "I'll have to stop Daniel"

If the original text contains significant error, it should be followed with the template {{sic}} (producing [sic]), to signify that the error was not made by Amnesia Wiki, but was present in the original text. It is, however, permissible to silently correct insignificant simple typographic and spelling errors, without adding the template.

To indicate an omission from quoted text, ellipses within brackets [...] are used. Use three unspaced dots for this – do not separate the dots by spaces [. . .], or use the precomposed ellipses character […] for this. Omitting text from a quote is appropriate to skip irrelevant information, filler-words (such as 'umm' or 'uhh'), or alike. It should not be used to remove important context, alter the meaning of a text, or to remove an obscenity.

Neutrality and point of view

Don't just restate a quote in plain text as if they're your own writing, without reformulating it. A quotation should not be used to express a personal opinion about the validity of a view – this is especially important when dealing with mystical subjects such as the orbs or the Shadow, where the experiences and witness testimony of the few who've come into contact with these may differ wildly, or where, due to their otherworldly nature, their exact properties may not be sufficiently understood, experienced, or communicated.

For instance; using the note Letter Regarding the Discovery of an Orb as a source:

• This would be a poor way of conveying the information in this note: A single orb is big enough to fill a person's cupped hands. The texture is smooth and jagged. Its colour washed whilst also rich. Contrast is not enough to describe its nature. Its appearance is an impossibility. The ancient stone relics have an immaculate surface and perfect shape that look like they could have been moulded by a factory. The orbs are an artificial paradox captured within stone.
• This would be better: The physical properties of an orb are poorly understood. They are known to be large enough to fill a person's cupped hands and to possess paradoxical, contrasting properties, such as having a simultaneously smooth and jagged texture, and a washed and rich colour. Prussian occultist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa describe the orb he encountered in the Prussian woods during the beginning of the 16th century as an "[...] impossibility, an artificial paradox captured within stone".

Be creative when rephrasing statements! In cases such as these, it helps to remember that the text is to be written using in-universe language, e.g., as if the orbs actually exist, and that Agrippa's account of their properties is one of the few testimonies on their nature in existence, and as such, it may not accurately represent their true nature and needs to be documented in a way that gets this across.

In the example above, it's appropriate to use a direct quotation for the final part of Agrippa's statement, to accurately represent emotive views or opinions that cannot be expressed in the same way without them. Quotes should not be used in this way to present cultural norms or beliefs as opinion or in the case of concise views or opinions, as the usage of quotation marks in these cases may risk implying the quoted material to be sarcastic or weaselly.

• Permissible: Agrippa describe the orb as an "[...] impossibility, an artificial paradox captured within stone".
• Unacceptable, may imply disapproval: Followers of the Mithraic faith consider the orbs to be "sacred".
• Unacceptable, may imply doubt: Agrippa found the orb to be "interesting".

Quotation format

• Quotations on the Amnesia Wiki should use double quotation marks.
• Quotations within quotations use single quotation marks.
• Punctuation marks are included within quotation marks only if that is what appears in the original text – otherwise, punctuation falls outside the closing quotation marks. This is referred to as the British practice of logical quotation, and is to be followed on the Amnesia Wiki.
• Normalise punctuation according to Manual of Style: Punctuation – e.g., both en dashes and em dashes are allowed, but curly quotation marks should be switched for straight quotation marks.
• Preserve italics and boldface within a quoted text, but normalise any other styling (such as colored text, underlining, or all caps).
• Explain abbreviations within quoted text using the <abbr> tag.
• When quoting text from a non-English source, a translation should always follow.
• Punctuation such as periods and colons before a closing quotation mark should be removed.
• Links within quotations should only be used if the meaning is clearly intended by the author of the quote.
• Longer quotes, generally those longer than 40 words or a few hundred characters, or that consists of more than a single paragraph (regardless of length), should always use the {{quote}} template.

Punctuation

Apostrophes and quotation marks

• Always use straight apostrophes and quotation marks (' and ") rather than curly apostrophes and quotation marks (‘ and ’, and “ and ”).
• Do not use accent marks or backticks (` and ´) as apostrophes or quotation marks.
• Most quotation marks take double quotation marks. Single quotation marks are used for quotes within quotes, or when translating or defining an unfamiliar term, with no comma before the definition (Weyer comes from Middle Dutch weyen 'to graze').
• Deeper nesting alternate between single and double quotes (Such as "He told me that Daniel documented it in his diary, writing 'Today I got [a letter] which differed greatly from the others--- from a baron in Prussia [...] He simply wrote: "I know. I can protect you. Come to Brennenburg castle." Signed Alexander.' "). Quotation marks in immediate succession should have a sliver of space between them, as seen in the example above.
• The use of a comma before a quotation embedded within a sentence is optional, but a partial quotation should never use them. See also Wikipedia Manual of Style – Punctuation before quotations.
• As mentioned in the previous section regarding quotations, when it comes to whether punctuation should fall inside or outside a quoted section, the Amnesia Wiki follows the British practice of logical quotation – in short, this means that punctuation should only be used within quotation marks if it was present in the original material.

Brackets and parentheses

These rules apply to both round brackets, which are often called parentheses, ( ), and square brackets, [ ]. Curly brackets, { }, are never to be used outside of markup.

• An opening bracket should be preceded by a space unless the opening bracket is preceded by an opening quotation mark or another opening bracket.
• A closing bracket should be followed by a space unless followed by a punctuation mark.
• If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, the punctuation should fall outside of the brackets (as in this example).
• Avoid adjacent sets of brackets – Instead, put the phrases in the same parenthetical, separated by commas.
  • Correct: Lillibeth Mandus (c. 1950-1890, also known as Lily) was the wife of British industrialist Oswald Mandus.
  • Incorrect: Lillibeth Mandus (c. 1950-1890) (also known as Lily) was the wife of British industrialist Oswald Mandus.
• Square brackets are used to indicate editorial replacements and insertions within quotations, albeit never to alter the intended meaning of the quote.

Ellipses

Ellipses are used to notify readers that material within a quotation has been omitted.

• The Amnesia Wiki's style for an ellipses is three unspaced dots within square brackets [...]. Do not use the precomposed ellipsis character (…) or three dots separated by spaces (. . .)
• Ellipses within brackets should be preceded and followed with a regular space, unless it is immediately preceded by a quotation mark or immediately followed by punctuation.
• Ellipses are sometimes used to represent a pause in speech, in which case the punctuation is retained in its original form. Always use brackets around ellipses when omitting information from a quote, to notify the reader that the ellipses are not present within the original text.
• Ellipses can also be used to represent an incomplete or garbled sentence or word. In this case, the word fragments should be separated by an ellipses with no brackets and no spaces surrounding it:
  • Correct: The captain received a garbled transmission that started with "Mayday! Mayday! This is the C...ra! Our engines have stalled and we are going down in the Algerian desert!"

Commas

• Use a pair of commas to bracket an apposition, unless another punctuation mark takes place of the second comma:
  • Correct: Hazel, Daniel's younger sister, remained in bed all summer.
  • Incorrect: Hazel, Daniel's younger sister remained in bed all summer.
  • Correct: Daniel used to read books to his younger sister, Hazel.
  • Incorrect: Daniel used to read books to his younger sister Hazel. – this would imply that Daniel has more than one younger sister.
• Brackets or parenthesis and the contents within them is ignored when it comes to using commas:
  • Correct: Frictional Games has released three games in the Amnesia series: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (developed by The Chinese Room), and Amnesia: Rebirth.
  • Incorrect: Frictional Games has released three games in the Amnesia series: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (developed by The Chinese Room) and Amnesia: Rebirth.
• The serial comma, more commonly referred to as an Oxford comma, is a comma used before a conjunction in lists of three or more items:
  • Daniel, Mandus, and Tasi – serial comma
  • Daniel, Mandus and Tasi – no serial comma
  The use of the serial comma is up to editor discretion, as long as consistency is maintained within an article. It is important to note, however, that the serial comma may sometimes be used to resolve an ambiguous statement, as seen in the following example:
  • Herbert sent letters to the people at the British Museum, Monsieur Florbelle and Faraj – this suggests that Monsieur Florbelle and Faraj were two of the people at the British Museum.
  • Herbert sent letters to the people at the British Museum, Monsieur Florbelle, and Faraj – this clarifies that Monsieur Florbelle and Faraj are separate from the people at the British Museum.
  If the sentence remains ambiguous even with the inclusion of the serial comma, consider different ways you can recast the sentence to clarify further.

Colons and semicolons

Colons are used to introduce something that demonstrates, explains, or modifies what precedes them, or to list items. Semicolons are used to mark a division within a sentence that is more decisive than a comma, but less so than a full stop.

• When using a colon to introduce a list of items, separate the items within the list using commas. However, if further descriptive statements are made for items within the list that may require further use of commas, separate these using semicolons:
  • Correct: Justine made her way through the different areas of the Cabinet of Perturbation: the Cells, where she encountered the self-mutilating Aloïs Racine; the Library, where she encountered the rageful Basile Giroux; and the Dungeon, where she encountered the violent, cannibalistic suitor Malo de Vigny.
• A simple rule for when it's appropriate to use semicolons is when the clauses are independent – this means that they can stand as their own sentences:
  • Incorrect: Though he had been here for months; he did not recognise his surroundings due to the effects of the amnesia potion.
  • Correct: Though he had been in here for months, he did not recognise his surroundings due to the effects of the amnesia potion.
  Here, "Though he had been here for months" does not make sense as its own sentence, and therefore is not an independent clause.
  • Incorrect: The prisoner was forced to drink the amnesia potion, Daniel drank the amnesia potion voluntarily.
  • Correct: The prisoner was forced to drink the amnesia potion; Daniel drank the amnesia potion voluntarily.
• The word however should be preceded by a semicolon if it holds the same meaning as nevertheless in the given context.

Hyphens and dashes

There's an important distinction to be made between hyphens (-), which indicate conjunction; and dashes (– or —), which are used for punctuation in sentences. As hyphens and dashes have different functions, they should not be used interchangeably.

Hyphens should be used for the following occasions:

• In hyphenated personal names.
• When linking prefixes with their main terms in certain constructions, such as in distinguishing between homographs (such as in re-dress vs redress), when the letters in contact are the same (such as in sub-basement or non-negotiable vs. subsection or nonlinear), when the letters in contact are vowels (such as in pre-industrial), and for words that are uncommon or may be misread (e.g., re-target rather than retarget, or sub-era instead of subera).
• In compound modifiers, to link related terms:
  • They can be used to make certain terms easier to read (such as in face-to-face discussion).
  • To disambiguate (for instance, to clarify that the "little" in terms such as little-celebrated games is not referring to the games being little).
  • For compounds that are used attributively (such as in she was a 34-year-old woman) or when used as nouns (such as in she was a 34-year-old).
  • When the two modifiers are separated (such as in two- and three-digit numbers). This is referred to as a hanging hyphen.

When it comes to dashes, it is important to remember that there are two different types of dashes that may be used: the en dash (–), and the em dash (—). These can be entered by clicking the "Special characters" menu in the toolbar at the top of the edit window, or manually by using – or — respectively. Alternatively, you can use the {{en}} template to insert an en dash, and the {{em}} template to insert an em dash. You can also use {{sen}} for a spaced en dash ( – ), which will automatically precede the dash with a non-breaking space ( ), which makes it impossible for the dash to initiate a new line after a line break.

Dashes should be used for the following occasions:

• For punctuating a sentence; replacing parentheses, commas, or colons. Either spaced en dashes or unspaced em dashes may be used for this purpose, as long as consistency is maintained within an article.
• When expressing a range; for replacing words such as to or through (e.g., His reign lasted from 1500–1549), but not and (He reigned between 1500 and 1549 rather than He reigned between 1500–1549). This is done with a single, unspaced en dash, unless either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or dash, in which case the dash should be spaced (for instance, it should be spaced in July 23, 1790 – December 1, 1791 but not in July 1–23).
• In compounds, replacing words such as to, versus, and, or between (for instance, in the sentence The orb shifted blue–green means the orb shiftes from blue to green, whereas the word blue-green with a hyphen suggests a single, separate colour between blue and green). A single, unspaced en dash is used for this purpose.
  • Further examples of this is when mentioning separate nations (for instance Japanese–American trade), but not when something or someone has an identity relating to several nations – a hyphen is used for this purpose (as in, They were a family of Japanese-Americans).
• Replacing a hyphen when applying a prefix or suffix to a compound that includes a space or a dash (such as in Pre–World War II Aircraft). A single, unspaced en dash is used for this purpose.
• To separate parts of an item in a list (such as in Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson – Design; Thomas Grip and Luis Rodero Morales – Programming; Mikael Hedberg – Writing; Mikko Tarmia – Composing). A single, spaced en dash is used for this purpose.
• Below a blockquote, in attributing it to the person who said it, a single, unspaced em dash may be used. Using the {{quote}} template will automatically format the quote in this manner.

Slashes

When using slashes (/), observe the following:

• An unspaced slash may be used to indicate phonemic pronounciation (amnesia is pronounced /æmˈniːziə/).
• An unspaced slash may be used to indicate fractions (7/8).
• An unspaced slash may be used to indicate an undefined time period, replacing the word or (e.g., He was born in 1871/1872).
• A spaced slash may be used to separate run-in lines in quoted poetry or song (e.g., Fair to fare on white foamed waves / little feather on the rise / my steady hand, it carefully saves / a quill most cherished by the wise).
• Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward.

Other punctuation

• Number signs (also known as hash signs, #), the word number, or the shorthand No. may all be used when referring to numbers or rankings (such as #1, number 1, or No. 1), as long as consistency is maintained within an article.
• Exclamation and question marks have no place in encyclopedic writing, outside of in quoted text.
• A space should never be put before a comma, semicolon, colon, period, question mark, or exclamation mark; even in quoted material.
• A period (full stop) should always be followed by a single space, never a double.

Dates and time

Time

• Both 12- and 24-hour formats are acceptable, as long as only one format is consistently maintained within a single article.
• Twelve-hour format can be written in two forms: am and pm, or a.m. and p.m.
• Twelve-hour format uses terms noon and midnight rather than 12 pm and 12 am.
• Twenty-four-hour format uses no suffix. Single-digit hours (1–9) may be padded with a zero or not (both 8:15 and 08:15 is fine).
• In twenty-four-hour format, 00:00 (or 0:00) denotes the start of a day.

Dates and months

• Dates are to be written out fully, except for in lists in tables, with the month either spelt out or using a three-letter abbreviation (e.g., both Apr and April is fine, but not simply 04). Whether to use month first or date first is up to writers discretion (e.g., both April 19 2024 and 19 April 2024 is okay to use).
• For month and year, write April 2024, with no comma.
• Dates in quotations and titles are always left as-is.
• If a numerical format is required, the YYYY-MM-DD format is to be used (e.g., 2024-04-19).

Years

• Do not use "the year" before digits (e.g., 2024, not the year 2024).
• Decades are written in the format the 1890s, with no apostrophe. Two digit-form (e.g. terms such as the '80s) are not to be used.
• Common Era notation (CE and BCE) is to be used ahead of anno Domini and before Christ (AD and BC) notation. The exception to this rule is, as always, in quotes and notations, which are always to be left as-is.

Numbers

• Integers from zero to nine are to be spelled out.
• Integers greater than nine expressible in one or two words may be expressed in either numerals or words.
• Other numbers are given in numerals, or in forms such as 26 million.
• Numbers with four or more digits are to be grouped in sets of three digits, separated by either a comma or a space (e.g., 10,000 or 10 000).

Grammar and usage

Writing on the Amnesia Wiki should refer to British English or American English grammar rules, as long as the same ruleset is maintained within an article. Make note, however, that it might be good practice to adhere to the style used in source material, to maintain consistency.

Possessives

• For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in s, add 's

Links

See also: Help:Links

Linking is a highly important feature when it comes to online encyclopaedias, so much so that populating a wiki article with links to other pages and making it easy to navigate is known as wikification.

All articles on a wiki should contain hyperlinks to other pages within its text – but not all mentions of a subject in the same article should provide a link to its page, and not all links need to point to other pages on the same wiki.

Wikilinks

See also: Help:Links/Wikitext

Internal links can be produced using wikitext in source mode by wrapping the name of a page in [[double brackets]]. For instance, typing [[Amnesia Wiki:Rules]] will produce: Amnesia Wiki:Rules. These are called wikilinks. The page from which the wikilink is activated is called the anchor; and the page the link points to is called the target.

• Piped links: You can change the displayed text of your link by inserting a pipe (|) directly following the page name, and including the text you want displayed after the pipe. For instance, typing [[Amnesia Wiki:Rules|Please read the rules!]] will produce: Please read the rules!.

• Red links: Linking to an article that doesn't exist will produce a red link. This is used to signify readers that a page doesn't exist, but should be created – wanted pages. The list of wanted pages can be found at Special:WantedPages, and any time you create a new red link, it will be sorted into this list. Note however that you should always double-check the links you create so that you don't accidentally create a red link where you didn't intend to.

• Linking to sections: You can also link to specific sections of a page by using the hash sign (#). For instance, [[Amnesia Wiki:Manual of Style#Links]] would provide a link to this section of the Manual of Style: Amnesia Wiki:Manual of Style#Links. This is useful when citing. You can also use the {{anchor}} template to link to sections within a text outside of headings.

• Linking to categories: If you want to link to a category page, providing a simple wikilink to the category will add the page to the category instead of linking to it. Therefore, if you want to link to a category instead of adding the page to the category, include a colon (:) before "Category:". For instance, [[:Category:Policies]] will produce: Category:Policies. Generally, linking to a category should not be done on article pages.

• Linking to files: Linking to a file using double brackets markup will add the file to the page, rather than create a link to the file. Similarly to categories, if you want to simply link to a file, you have to include a colon before "File:". For instance, [[:File:Rebirth logo small.png]] will produce: File:Rebirth logo small.png.

External links

External links are links to pages outside of the Amnesia Wiki. These come in two forms: those that can be generated purely by using wikitext (so called interwiki links), and those that are generated using URLs.

Interwiki links

See also: Help:Interwiki link and Community:MediaWiki:Interwiki map

In source mode, interwiki links can be created by using the double bracket markup in combination with one or several prefixes:

• Linking to another Fandom community: To link to another fandom community, use the format [[w:c:<name of wiki>:<name of page>]]. For instance, if you wanted to link to the Tom Redwood page on the Penumbra wiki, you would use [[w:c:penumbra:Tom Redwood]]. Note that links created using the w:c: method always appear blue, regardless if the page exists or not – it is therefore imperative that you always ensure that your link directs anyone who clicks it to the correct page when creating interwiki links.

• Linking to a non-English community: Non-English communities usually use language code prefixes before the domain name. For instance, if you wanted to link to the Russian language article on Simon Jarrett (the protagonist of SOMA), you would use [[w:c:ru.soma:Саймон Джарретт]] (note that the use of the name of the page in the target language is necessary for this to work).

• Linking to a non-English Amnesia community: This is even easier, as it only requires the language code and page name. Note however, that it's important to include a colon before the language code if all you want to do is create a link to the page – otherwise, these links will appear as Interlanguage links at the top and bottom of the page rather than in the text. For instance, [[es:Daniel]] would create interlanguage links, but [[:es:Daniel]] would create a simple hyperlink.

• Linking to Wikipedia or Wiktionary: Linking to a Wikipedia article is very simple and just uses the wikipedia: prefix. For instance, if you wanted to link to the Wikipedia page on Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you would use [[wikipedia:Amnesia: The Dark Descent]]. Linking to a Wiktionary page works similarly by using the wiktionary: prefix.

• Linking to a non-english Wikipedia article: This uses language code prefixes after the domain prefix, similarly to how linking to another Fandom community works (e.g., [[wikipedia:fi:Amnesia: The Dark Descent]] would link to the Finnish language version of the Wikipedia article on Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

• Linking to other external wiki communities: While linking to Wikipedia is the most common use of using wikitext to link to other wiki communities outside of Fandom, there are many other sites that can be linked to using the [[prefix:pagename]] markup. A full list of which pages can be linked to can be found on the Community Wiki's interwiki map.

• Pipes and anchors: Piping functions identically when using interwiki links as when using wikilinks, and may be used to change the text displayed in the hyperlink. Similarly, using a hash sign to link to specific sections of a page works as well.

URL links

Linking to pages outside of the Community Wiki's interwiki map can't be done purely using wikitext. These are instead generated by simply inserting the full link into the page (such as https://frictionalgames.com/, for instance).

• Wrapping the link in single brackets replaces the link with a number in brackets. For instance, [https://frictionalgames.com/] would result in [1].

• The displayed text can be substituted by wrapping the text in brackets and including the text you wish to be displayed within the brackets immediately following the link, following a single space. For instance, [https://frictionalgames.com/ Frictional Games] would result in Frictional Games. Note that no pipe character ( | ) is used for this operation.

General points on linking

It is always important that your article includes at least a couple of wikilinks to other articles. However, when wikifying your page, keep in mind the following:

• Make sure the links you make are relevant and helpful in the context. Excessive use of links may only serve to be distracting instead of helpful.
• Avoid uneccesary capitalisation. The MediaWiki software, which is what the Amnesia Wiki and all other Fandom wikis run on, does not require that wikilinks begin with a capital letter. Therefore, you should only capitalise according to the rules set out in Manual of Style § Capitalisation.
• Avoid placing links in headings. Instead, use a {{main}} or {{see also}} template immediately after the heading to link to the relevant article.
• Avoid placing links in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead.
• Avoid linking within quotations, unless the meaning is clearly intended by the author of the quote.
• Generally, avoid putting several links in succession, such as in a sentence like "It is explained in a [[Brennenburg Castle]] [[Archives]] [[Notes (The Dark Descent)#Local Folklore|note]]" (which would give: "It is explained in a Brennenburg Castle Archives note"). Consider instead rephrasing the sentence, ommitting one of the links, or using a single but more specific link.
• Avoid linking to pages outside of the main namespace in articles, such as User, MediaWiki, or Special pages.
• Avoid implementing coloured links, as these may impede user ability to distinguish links from regular text.
• Double check your links: Ensure that the destination is the intended one. Some words, for instance Amnesia and Justine, redirect to a disambiguation page instead of a complete article.
• Clarity: The article linked to should correspond as closely as possible to the term showing as the link, given the context. For instance, Herbert and Daniel travelled to the Mithraic Temple in Algeria, rather than Herbert and Daniel travelled to the Mithraic Temple in Algeria—this makes it clear that the link is for the article on the specific temple in Algeria, rather than on Mithraic temples in general.

Overlinking and underlinking

To maintain an appropriate amount of links in your article, keep the following in mind:

• Generally, a link should be provided for any relevant connections to the subject that can healp the reader understand the article more fully. This can include any character, person, event, location, or creature that already have an article or clearly deserve one.
• Any unfamiliar proper name should contain a link to the relevant article.
• Links should be provided for any technical terms, jargon, or slang expressions; using an interwiki link to the relevant Wikipedia or Wiktionary article explaining the term. Things such as everyday words, common occupations, major locations (that are not featured in the Amnesia series), major languages, major religions, or major nationalities or ethnicities should not be linked.
• Avoid linking to disambiguation pages outside of hatnotes.
• Generally, a link should only appear once in the lead and main body of an article, or at the most, only once per section. However, outside of this, a link can be duplicated at its first occurence after the lead, in the article's infobox, in image captions, in footnotes, in hatnotes, in tables, and in the citations.