CogLing:Manual of style

In order to maintain uniformity across the articles of CogLing we have written a little manual of style. For information on the most basic writing techniques and styles, which are used here, see Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

Article layout
Artciles should be structured as follows (see the layout guide for more details):


 * Main article
 * Bibliography
 * See also
 * External links
 * Category

Naming articles
In order to make things easy for our users, articles should be appropriately named after the theory or framework, term, linguistic or conceptual phenomenon, individual or group, publication or event that serves as the main topic of the article.

Thus, an article on Frame Semantics should be named "Frame Semantics" while an article on purport should be named "purport", and an article on the ditransitive construction should be named "ditransitive construction".

What if the same topic has several names?
If the same topic has several names, just pick the name you think is the mos well known one, and then create redirects from the other names. For example, the commercial transaction frame is sometimes also known as the commercial transfer frame. If you think that the former is the most widely spread name, then you use that four your article. When you've finished writing it and saved the page, you create a page called "commercial transfer frame" with a redirect to "commercial transaction frame".

What if several topics have the same name?
If several different topics have the same name, you will have to use a parenthesis after the title. For example the name of the theoretical framework that we are interested here is "Cognitive Linguistics", but there is also a journal called "Cognitive Linguistics" and a book by William Croft and D.A. Cruse called "Cognitive Linguistics". In this case, the theoretical framework with just be called "Cognitive Linguistics", the journal will be called "Cognitive Linguistics (journal)" and the book will be called "Cognitive Linguistics (book)". If there are alot of articles with such similar names, it migh be helpful to create a disambiguation page.

Fonts
The first time the main topic of the article is mentioned, it should be boldfaced. Italics is used to indicated form, while UPPER CASE is used to indicate semantic and conceptual content.

Quotations
There are several formats of quotation. To make things easier for you, we have created a handful of quotation templates for you to use.

Boldface
You create bold text by using the ''' marking. If you mark some text like this I'm feeling bold, it will produce this: I'm feeling bold.

Italics
You create italics by using the '' marking. If you mark some text like this Mamma mia, it will produce this: Mamma mia.

Links to other articles
You create links to other articles in CogLing with the marking. If you mark some text like this this is a link, it will create a link. If the link is red, it means that the page it links to does not exist yet. If it is blue, it means that it links to an existing page.

If you want to create a link to an article in Wikipedia, you use the same marking, but you have to use a specific syntax. If you were to create a link to the Wikipedia article on links you have to do it like this Link.

If the name of the article you cant to link to does not fit into the wording of the article you are working on, you can create a piped link using the | marking. The name of the page you want to link to comes before the pipe, and the disguising text comes after the pipe. If you write this, for instance "I read Croft and Cruse's book the other day", it will look like this: "I read Croft and Cruse's book the other day".

Note that you do not have to link to the same page several times within the same article. Just create link the first time the topic of the page you want to link to is mentioned.

To create external links to other websites you use the [] with the URL.

Headings
Use the == and === markups for headings. If you mark some text like this ==This is a heading==, you will create the heading for a section of the article. If you mark some text like this ===This is a heading===, you will create the heading for a subsection within a section of the article. If you mark some text like this ====This is a heading====, you will create the heading for a subsection within a subsection of the article.

If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches.

Bullets and asterisks
To create bullet lists you have to use an asterisk to indicate each bullet.

For example:
 * * My surgeon is a butcher
 * * My butcher is a surgeon

will produce
 * My surgeon is a butcher
 * My butcher is a surgeon

If you want to use an asterisk to indicate that something is ungrammatical you will have to use the asterisk template.

You use the asterisk template by adding * in front of the ungrammatical phenomenon. So, if you write " * Surgeon a my is butcher", it will produce "*Surgeon a my is butcher".

Enumeration
Linguists like to enumerate examples. Fortunately this is very simple in Wikisyntax. Just use the # -sign in front of what you want to enumerate.

For example:
 * # My surgeon is a butcher
 * # My butcher is a surgeon

will produce
 * 1) My surgeon is a butcher
 * 2) My butcher is a surgeon

Signature
You should not place date and signature in artcles you have created or edited. However, you are required to sign all your contributions to talk pages. You sign by adding four tildes after your comment ( ~ ), which will automatically insert date and user name.