StarfieldWiki:Spelling

This page provides information about the standards for spelling and capitalization used on Starfield Wiki. It covers some of the general guidelines used to determine the appropriate spelling and also provides a compilation of some of the most commonly misspelled words.

General
Starfield Wiki is written using American English. Although contributions written in other versions of English (for example, British English) are still welcome, ideally those contributions will later be revised to match the site standards. American spellings should not be replaced by International spellings. Consistency is particularly important in an electronic medium such as the wiki: a search done for the word "armor" will miss any pages that instead use "armour". American English has been chosen because Starfield made by an American company. Redirect pages (e.g., Starfield:Armour) can be created using UK spellings for particularly common words.

Starfield uses many unique words and names. The spelling of all Starfield words should match the spelling used in the game, even if that differs from the common English spelling. When there is a discrepancy, the spelling seen by the player in the game (e.g., in dialogs, books, and inventories) should be used in preference to any spelling seen only in the construction set (e.g., in internal identifiers and scripts). Cases where multiple spellings of a word are known to exist are all listed later on this page.

Capitalization should in general follow regular English rules. A few notable points are:
 * In sentences, the first word and any proper nouns should be capitalized.
 * In titles and subtitles, all words should be capitalized except for minor words that are not at the start of the title (prepositions such as "of", "from"; conjunctions such as "and", "or"; articles such as "a", "the"; etc.). Each word in a hyphenated title should be treated as a separate word and capitalized according to the same rules.
 * Any proper nouns from the game should be capitalized (e.g., New Atlantis).
 * Any titles from the game (such as mission titles) should match the capitalization used in the game, even if that differs from standard capitalization.
 * Compass points should be lower-case unless part of a title or proper place (e.g., "due north", but "West Weald").

Planets
When designated by their order relative to their orbited star (such as Nirvana II) the order number is given in roman numerals. Moons can also be designated by an ordinal, which is given as a lowercase latin letter (e.g. Tau Ceti VIII-b).

Books
The text of books is taken verbatim from the games. Typographical or grammatical errors in the text should not be fixed, unless the correction is absolutely necessary to understand the book. Any such changes should be documented (for example in a note in the introduction to the book).

Quotes
Any text directly quoted from the game should be copied verbatim, as with Books. Typographical or grammatical errors in the text should not be fixed, unless the correction is absolutely necessary to understand the quote. The Sic template can be used to clarify that the error is not an error in the article, but the error comes from the original in-game text. "Sic" is short for "Sic erat scriptum", which roughly means "as was written" and is often used to indicate that an error was present in quoted passages and not introduced after quotation.

Proper Names
There may be cases where the names of specific items or places contain typographical errors. The spelling of proper names should never be changed; the wiki should exactly match the spelling as used in-game.

Specific Words
This section provides a listing of words that are commonly misspelled on the wiki. This is not intended to be a comprehensive spelling guide: editors should use a standard dictionary to determine the appropriate spelling of common English words or use the search function for words specific to the Elder Scrolls games.

General Words
American English: Except as noted below, use American English spellings and usages.
 * analyze, paralyze: Do not use the Commonwealth spellings (analyse, paralyse). While the -yse spelling is common outside the U.S, the -yze spelling is always preferred in American English.
 * armor: Do not use the Commonwealth "armour"; likewise for other -or words such as "color", "favor", "honor", etc. Exceptions are made for spellings used in the games (see "savior" below).
 * councilor, leveled: The single-consonant versions should be used in favor of the Commonwealth double-consonant words ("councillor", "levelled"). Likewise for adding suffixes to other words ending in a short vowel followed by a consonant, such as "traveling" versus "travelling".
 * center, program: The US spellings should be used, not Commonwealth (centre, programme).
 * dialog / dialogue: "Dialog" is primarily a US spelling, but is also acceptable in international English. Either spelling is acceptable on the site. Some prefer "dialog" to refer to interface elements ("dialog box", "dismiss the inventory dialog"), and "dialogue" for character content ("the NPC's dialogue varies by player character race"); this distinction is permissible on the wiki, but not required. There should be no need to correct either spelling of this word, except to provide consistency within a single article, and with the aforementioned distinction in mind.
 * gray / grey: both spellings are acceptable, and the game tends to use both spellings almost equally. In a proper name, the spelling should always match the game's spelling of that name.
 * jewelry: This word is never spelled "jewelery"; "jewellery" is a Commonwealth spelling, but the US form "jewelry" should be used on the wiki.
 * minimize, realization, recognize: Do not use not the British spellings (minimise, realisation, recognise). Although technically correct in most Commonwealth countries, the -ise form is uncommon outside of the UK, and even many British prefer the -ize spellings. Note that some words do not have an -ize form, such as "advertise".
 * northeast, southwest: When referring to intercardinal directions, use the North American spelling (compound word), not Commonwealth (hyphenated – e.g., north-east, south-west). However, when referring to secondary intercardinal directions, use a hyphen to separate the first direction from the second and third (e.g., west-northwest, south-southeast).
 * while / whilst: The US "while" should be used, not the British "whilst". Similarly, "among" should be used in preference to "amongst".
 * worshipper, worshipping: The double-p versions are far more common in-game (despite this being inconsistent with "councilor" versus "councillor", etc.). Accordingly, UESP uses "worshipper" and "worshipping" except when the other spelling appears in-game.

Possessives:
 * NPCs, NPC's: The term "NPC" (non-player character) is used as a noun. Thus, the proper plural form of "NPC" is "NPCs", not "NPC's". "NPC's" is the possessive form, and should only be used when writing about something that belongs to an NPC. Additionally, the proper article to use in the singular is "an NPC", not "a NPC".

Other:
 * mission giver: English rules around hyphenating compound nouns are inconsistent (e.g., "truck driver" but also sometimes "truck-driver"). The vast majority of pages on the wiki currently use "quest giver", so this should be the standard for any new text.
 * wiki: The word "wiki" is not a proper noun and therefore should not be capitalized when used on its own (however, it is capitalized in the name "UESPWiki", simply as a function of the name of the site being a proper noun). The word "wikia" is never correct (Wikia, Inc., is a wiki hosting service that UESP does not use).