Critical Role wiki:Manual of Style

&rarr; For formatting basics, see Help:Wiki Editing Cheatsheet or Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet

These are style guidelines and formatting advice for the Critical Role wiki. This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide on wiki mark-up but rather a general overview of style, how to perform frequently occuring editing tasks, and common formatting considerations.

General and misc. guidance

 * The wiki, like Critical Role, generally uses American English spelling.
 * Keep in mind the gap between in-character and out-of-character when writing, i.e. "Fjord considered releasing Uk'otoa" is not verifiably true where "Travis considered releasing Uk'otoa" is and these are not the same.
 * Use the serial comma as it is most grammatically clear, i.e. "Caleb, the warlock, and the cleric" not "Caleb, the warlock and the cleric" unless Caleb was suddenly a warlock-cleric multiclass.
 * Generally, follow the D&D house style guide unless otherwise noted within this guide. The most relevant for the wiki are:
 * Do not hyphenate a compound that's composed of a numeral and an abbreviation or word, i.e. "100 gp" or "100 gold" not "100-gp" or "100-gold".
 * Spell levels are the ordinal and hyphenated, i.e. 3rd-level.
 * Use numerals for points, scores, damage expressions, and any game trait with a numerical value as well as currency, before abbreviations or units of measure, or dates. Otherwise, spell out numbers from zero to one hundred and any formed by adding "hundred," "thousand," or "hundred thousand". For example, it's "8d10 force damage", "192 hit points", "DC 15", "5,000 gold", "60 feet" (when discussing mechanics such as movement speed or spell range), "1 hour" (when discussing spell length), "1 bonus action" but it's "three Cloven Crystals", "eight city-states", "two hundred miles south of Port damali", "seven adventurers", "three days of travel".
 * Spells are proper nouns and are italicized, i.e. Sending and Eldritch Blast.
 * Feats and other abilities are proper nouns and are not italicized, i.e. Divine Intervention and Marine Layer.
 * Names of ships are italicized and do not include the definite article unless it is indicated to be part of the ship's name, i.e. the Ball-Eater.
 * Exandrian years are formatted with a space and no periods, i.e. "836 PD" not "836PD" nor "836 P.D." Exandrian dates are formatted as day-month, i.e. "16 Sydenstar". For guidance on real-world dates, see
 * Avoid bolding words for emphasis outside article leads or lists of sentences or paragraphs, i.e. the names of locations at Zadash are bolded because each bullet is lengthy but the items at Caduceus Clay are not bolded because each bullet is concise.
 * Similarly, avoid italicizing words for emphasis.
 * Section headers are bolded.
 * Avoid use of small or reduced size text outside of reference lists, particularly in Infoboxes. This is an accessibility issue.
 * Link to individual episodes using ep. This maintains consistency.
 * If a table of contents becomes long, it can be shortened using TOClimit. Please use this instead of removing section headers, which are useful for links and ease of editing.

Handling spoilers
The wiki does not have a moratorium on spoilers. Articles may be, and often are, updated while an episode is airing, and information considered spoilers is not in any way marked off or separated from the rest of the article. When working with spoilers, integrate all information into the article where it will be most natural and appropriate and do not hide spoilers underneath collapsible sections or inside their own sectioned off subheaders.

See the "Providing timestamps" section for information on how to appropriately handle timestamps for episodes that are not yet on YouTube.

Paraphrasing sources
Do not simply copy-paste or rewrite word-for-word paragraphs from an episode, guide, or other source. This is plagiarism, and it is not allowed on the wiki. Paraphrase or restate the content in the source, as you would when writing a graded academic essay. If it is felt necessary to quote a notably lengthy portion of dialogue or written text exactly, note that it is directly quoted through use of double quotes ("), the quotebox template, or the quote template. Double quotes is also appropriate when usage of a specific word feels as if it may be mistaken as the opinion of the editor when it is a statement by a character or text.

Otherwise, use your own words but without misrepresenting or editorializing the source. When in doubt, enclose them in quotes.

Writing prose
This wiki generally uses a mixture of in-universe and out-of-universe style when describing events and characters. It is appropriate to frame events using in-universe dates, real-life episode numbers, or both. For example, the following are all equally appropriate:
 * On 18 Misuthar 836 PD, Fjord ended his pact with Uk'otoa.
 * In, Fjord ended his pact with Uk'otoa.
 * On 18 Misuthar 836 PD, in, Fjord ended his pact with Uk'otoa.

This said, prose is written more from an in-universe perspective and than out-of-universe one. However, mind the gap between in-character and out-of-character when writing, i.e. "Fjord considered releasing Uk'otoa" is not necessarily verifiably true where "Travis considered releasing Uk'otoa" is; a player may state a character's intent or may state their own player intent, and these are not always the same. Take care to be aware of this and represent this accurately and properly in articles.

Contractions are fine to use, and it is not necessary to avoid them. If one wishes to avoid using them when personally writing, feel free to do so; however, it is not necessary to edit an article simply to write out contractions. Otherwise, avoid too casual a tone.

Verb tense
Use past tense when describing events or an action, i.e. "Caleb released Frumpkin from service as his familiar" or "The de Rolo family founded Whitestone", unless it is an ongoing state of affairs, i.e. "The Bright Queen demands that all beacons be turned over into Dynasty possession". The only real exception to this is in references, which tend to use literary present.

Living characters, extant locations, and extant items are written about in present tense, i.e. "Port Damali functions as the de facto capital of the Clovis Concord", "Yasha Nydoorin collects flowers by pressing them into a journal", "Dwueth'var allows the wielder to cast Faerie Fire". In contrast, destroyed locations and dead characters are written about in past tense, i.e. "Molaesmyr was a post-Divergence elven civilization" and "Delilah Briarwood was ruthless, cold, and calculating". When in doubt about a character's, location's, or item's status, write in present tense.

Article titles
Articles should be titled in a way that is most accurate, precise, and clear about what the subject is. A title should use the subject's most commonly used and preferred full name. It should be located at the official spelling, and if none exists, the most commonly used or intuitive spelling. If the subject changed names over the course of the narrative or lore, use whichever is most recently in common and prefered usage. Titles should also avoid using epithets or nicknames, preferring their personal names, and they should not include any titles the character holds. They should be capitalized properly, using Title Case if they are a proper noun and capitalizing only the first letter if they are not; for items, generally this follows guidance in published D&D materials.
 * Caleb Widogast, not "Bren Aldric Ermendrud"
 * Fjord, not "Fjord Stone"
 * Vex'ahlia de Rolo, not "Vex", "Vex'ahlia", nor "Vex'ahlia Vessar"
 * Veth Brenatto, not "Nott the Brave"
 * Nein Heroez, not "Eden's Horizon" nor "Nine Heroes"
 * Rosohna, not "Ghor Dranas"
 * Marion Lavorre, not "Ruby of the Sea" nor "Marian Lavorre"
 * Delilah Briarwood, not "Lady Briarwood" nor "Lady Delilah Briarwood"
 * Threshold crest, not "Threshold Crest"

Possible alternative names may be created as redirects if they are likely to be searched for or linked to, such as Vex, Nott the Brave, Ruby of the Sea, Ghor Dranas, and Lady Briarwood.

Structure
Structure, usually in the form of subsections, varies from article to article depending on the subject. Consult the following templates and articles on how to best structure an article per subject.
 * Episode: Template:New episode, Refjorged, The Nameless Ones
 * Character: Template:New character, Caduceus Clay, Lucien
 * Person: Kami Areopagita, Aabria Iyengar
 * Item: Template:New item, Circlet of Barbed Vision, Cape of the Mountebank
 * Location: Template:New location, Rifenmist Jungle, Eiselcross
 * City: Template:New city, Emon, Byroden
 * Spell: Template:New spell, Fortune's Favor, Decompose

There are other types of articles, and typical ways to structure those, but typically, an article should be structured in a way that feels intuitive and natural. If the article is short because there is not a lot of information to write about the subject, then headers are not strictly necessary, i.e. Catha. For longer articles, create headers to group together paragraphs of similar information in the way one would group sentences together in paragraphs and name those sections as appropriate. However, avoid creating section names that are too long; aim for complete but concise names.

The lead
The lead, or lede, is the paragraph or paragraphs at the top of the article that summarize its contents. The lead should give an overview of the article and a reader should be able to get all the most important information about the article by reading this section. The first mention of the subject of the article, such as the character's name or the object, is bolded. If the subject is known by multiple names, both phrases are bolded. For example:
 * Dwueth'var, also known as the Star Razor
 * The Nein Heroez is a ship captained by Fjord. It was formerly known as the Eden's Horizon.

Significant titles that precede the subjects name may be bolded as well when used with the subject's name in the first phrase of the article. However, the titles should not be bolded if used elsewhere in the lead. For example:
 * Marquis Olesya Lapidus is a human woman from Port Damali.

...or...
 * Olesya Lapidus is the marquis of Port Damali.

...but not...
 * Olesya Lapidus is the marquis of Port Damali.

The infobox goes at the very top of this section. If there is no infobox but there is an image, that image goes at the very top of this section as well. The first sentence of the article should then be on the next consecutive line after these, without a line in between: Olesya Lapidus is the marquis of Port Damali.

...or...

The Cloven Crystals are the three magical keys to the seals binding Uk'otoa beneath the Lucidian Ocean.

This ensures that there is not a gap, or an extra line break, at the top of the article.

Linking to other articles
Articles are connected to each other in the form of links. Links are created by putting square brackets around a term, i.e.  will create Campaign 1. Do not worry if an article does not yet exist but the target is valid, such as Cyrios End Forest or Green Beetle Breastplate. These "redlinks" are perfectly appropriate and often encourage article creation. They also help populate the Special:WantedPages report and inform the wiki on what articles are missing.

They can also be piped, allowing links different from the name of the article, i.e.  will create DM of Exandria Unlimited. When doing this, avoid making the piped text too short, thus difficult to click, as this creates an accessibility issue. For example, avoid things like "in Campaign 1 and 2" and reword to make links easier to access.

Specific sections within an article can be linked to by following the name of the article with a hash (#) and then the name of the section, i.e.  will create to Zadash, which will send the reader to that specific section instead of loading at the top of the page. If linking within the same article, the article name is not necessary, i.e.  will create, which will link to that section above on this article. This is case sensitive.

Also avoid "easter egg" links. Links should be clear about what article they will send the reader to, or at least make intuitive sense. The reader should not be surprised to end up at the article they were linked to. For example, a reader who sees "captain of the Tide's Breath" will expect to land at the article for that character, Vandran. However, if this phrase was linked as "captain of the Tide's Breath", the reader may be surprised to end up at Vandran because the link suggests that it was going to an article about sea captains in general.

Overlinking
Articles will want to avoid overlinking, linking to another article an unnecessary number of times. So, generally, articles should link to a term only once, at its first instance in the article. Sometimes, it is desirable to link to the same term multiple times:
 * If the article has an infobox, a term should be linked the at its first instance in the lead and the first instance in the infobox.
 * Mollymauk Tealeaf's tarot deck links to Beauregard Lionett both in the lead and in the infobox. It links Mollymauk Tealeaf only once in the lead and only once in the infobox, despite there being two instances each.
 * Avoid linking terms in the image captions unless it seems helpful to do so. In the same example, it is less helpful to link to Jester Lavorre in the art caption and more helpful to link her name in the "Owners" section. However, at Catha, it is helpful to link to Ruidus in the image caption.
 * If an article has subsections, as most do, link a term both in its first instance in the lead and first instance in the body.
 * Vide Cay links to the Revelry at the first instance in the lead and the first instance under the "Description" section.
 * Driftwood Asylum links to Port Damali at the first instance in the lead and the first instance under the "History" section. It also links to Port Damali in the infobox.
 * If an article does not have subsections, this is not necessary. For example, Ruidus does not need to link to Exandria a second time in the second paragraph.
 * If the article is lengthy, it may be worth linking to another article a second time provided there are a number of sections between the first instance and a relevant section. This is most often done in relationship sections of lengthy character articles, where having a link to the other character is intuitive.

Generally, because episodes are linked to using ep, it is fine to line to the same episode article multiple times throughout an article. If it feels to be too much, use true to turn off the link.

References and other footnotes
When adding to articles, editors must provide a source for the information. References are created in a variety of ways, usually by creating footnotes through the  tag or through templates such as ep ref. These are templates commonly used as references. Consult the documentation on how they are used:
 * ep ref
 * guide ref
 * dnd ref
 * twitter

If a template is not available, simply write out the information stating the source in a clear manner between  tags. The citation should be clear and give enough information so that a reader can easily locate the information themselves in the source. A clear citation generally provides the author or publisher of the source, title, URL if applicable, page numbers if applicable, publication date, and an archived URL if applicable. Strict adherence to any given citation style is definitely not required. Simply strive for clarity and to provide enough information about the source. Use these examples as guides:
 * Critical Role Newsletter (2021-07-22). Visit Tal'Dorei AND Get to Know Anjali! ✨. Archived on 2021-07-22.
 * "Exclusive Interview: Chris Lockey" by Adam Bassett. Worldbuilding Magazine, volume 4, issue 3, June 2020, pp. 16-22.
 * Critical Role’s next campaign book will explore the continent of Tal'Dorei," Polygon (July 22, 2021).

Sometimes, you may run into information that doesn't have a citation or cannot be definitively sourced. You may find the following templates useful to mark this information:
 * cite, adds a "citation needed" footnote where there is no readily available source given
 * presumed, adds a "presumed" footnote when it is a fair assumption to make but no explicit source is available
 * spelling, adds a "spelling?" footnote for uncomfirmed spelling
 * disputed, adds a "disputed" footnote when the statement is not necessarily accurate
 * clarify, adds a "clarify" footnote when it's difficult to understand the information

Providing timestamps
Timestamps should refer to the YouTube versions of the episodes. The versions aired live or archived on Twitch are often longer than the versions on YouTube, leading to discrepancies in timestamps for specific moments. Citation templates like ep ref or ep time link to YouTube, which are the final and publicly accessible versions, and to ensure that citations are pointing to the correct place, use the YouTube versions.

Use HH:MM:SS format, i.e. 00:04:08. This timestamp unambiguously refers to 4 minutes and 8 seconds into the video where 4:08 might possibly be referring to 4 hours and 8 minutes into the same video. This ensures that the templates are always correctly linking to the intended place in the episode.

Citing episodes not yet on YouTube
If providing citation to an episode that is not yet on YouTube, please hold off on adding timestamps to ep ref using the live or Twitch version. Adding these timestamps directly to the template makes it impossible to locate and update the citations with the final YouTube timestamp. To provide a citation for information from an episode not yet posted to YouTube, use the template to cite the episode and use the cite parameter to mark it as needing a timestamp, i.e. . This allows editors to track this citation and provide the correct timestamp when the episode is available on YouTube. If you wish, you may provide context for where in the episode is found through a hidden note, i.e., explaining context or giving a rough timestamp or through the template's more parameter to give context so that it is easier to find within the episode later.

Displaying footnotes
Footnotes can be displayed by playing  or   at the bottom of a page in a references section. The difference between these two bits of markup is that  will display the footnotes at full font-size where   will display the footnotes at a smaller size. For a comparison, see Cloven Crystal. Generally,  is used and   rarely, if ever. However, the full font-size of  makes it worth considering for footnotes that are explanatory as opposed to citation.

Footnote placement
Typically, references are added to the end of a sentence or group of consecutive sentences using the same citation. They can also be added to the middle of sentences, if a single sentence is made up of distinct clauses cited to different sources; this isn't always necessary, however, and it is equally appropriate to add both references to the end of the sentence. In all cases, if application, they always go after punctuation, including parentheses. Here are some examples to illustrate various appropriate placements:
 * Molly is short for Mollymauk.
 * Both Beau and Veth speak Halfling.
 * Both Beau and Veth speak Halfling.
 * Port Damali is a city in the Menagerie Coast, and it is governed by Marquis Olesya Lapidus.
 * Fjord sailed for many years aboard the Tide's Breath. It was captained by Vandran, whom he admired. The ship sank during a storm.

Naming and reusing references
When using many references, it will be beneficial to name references. This will allow you to re-use the same reference without listing it multiple times in the reference list, keeping the reference list concise and easily navigable. Naming a reference depends on method of citation. When using, name the reference by adding   to the opening tag. Citation templates, such as ep ref, are named using the name parameter. Once a reference is named, this same reference can be called elsewhere on the article by typing. The templates guide ref and dnd ref automatically scan the articles for identical references and group them together, but they can be named using name as well. References must be given names that are unique within the article.

Footnote groups
Groups of references can be created for various purposes, usually for art attribution but also useful for explanatory footnotes. This can be done by using the group parameter. Typing  will result in a grouped footnote. However,  will not show up in a normal. These are grouped separately and must be displayed using  or. Here are example:


 * Most episodes as posted to YouTube are shorter than their versions on Twitch.
 * The Tide's Breath was a merchant ship operating out of Port Damali.
 * Jester's parents are Marion Lavorre and Babenon Dosal.
 * Sabian is a member of the Revelry.

References group: note

References group: fn

Other types of footnotes follow the same placement guidelines outlined in the previous section.

Categories
Categories organize pages into groups and facilitate discovery of related articles. A category is added to an or another category through the markup, placed at the very bottom of the page underneath everything else.

Generally, a page should be added to the most specific sub-category only, i.e. added to "Magic Items" but not both "Magic Items" and "Items", "Greying Wildlands" but not all "Greying Wildlands", "Wildemount", and "Places". There are exceptions—particularly for smaller categories like "Spells"—but this is the general rule.

Sorting articles inside categories
Articles are sorted within categories alphabetically. Individual articles can be sorted according to a sortkey:. This is useful for articles that, for some reason, are less useful when sorted using their article titles. For example, The Laughing Hand is more helpfully sorted inside Category:Antagonists as "Laughing Hand", and this can be accomplished by adding the "Antagonists" category with. If there are multiple categories on an article, instead of setting a sortkey for each category individually, one can use  instead. So, at The Laughing Hand, adding  will mean that it is sorted that way alphabetically in every category, except where an individual category sortkey is specified.

An article that shares its name with its category should be sorted at the top of that category by setting an asterisk (*) or a space as the sortkey:  or. This is make the article easy to find within its own category, i.e. Dunamancy is at the top of Category:Dunamancy.

Adding images to articles
&rarr; See also: User blog:LynnE216/Adding Art to the Critical Role Wiki

There are a great many images here at the wiki that can be used to illustrate articles, and more are added constantly. To add an image to an article, simply locate the file and type  to create a thumbnail. Images can be formatted in various ways. For example,  will create a thumbnail of File:Example.jpg that is aligned to the left, 75px wide, and captioned with "Here is a caption" like so:



Note that usually, images will appear in-line with paragraph text on desktop. As illustrated by the image next to this paragraph. Right alignment and 180px width is default for thumbnails when it is not otherwise specified. Typically, images are captioned using the art caption details that are, generally, provided at each image's details page. To ensure that attribution for images correctly shows up, check if there's an art references group at the bottom of the page inside the references section. If there isn't one, you simply add one by pasting the following code underneath the existing references list (but above any templates or categories):

Art:

Tables
&rarr; For further and more detailed information, see Help:Tables at Wikipedia

If one is not familiar with the markup for tables, they are most easily inserted using the Source Editor's table tool. Generally, tables should not be sortable, unless it is likely that a reader may want to view the information in multiple different orders. For example, readers will not want to view an episode table in any order other than chronological but they may want to view the table at Sending chronologically or ordered by caster.

Sorting episodes in tables
&rarr; For further and more detailed information, see Help:Sorting at Wikipedia, particularly Help:Specifying a sort key for a cell

Because episodes are generally linked to using the ep template, they do not sort chronologically in tables. This can be remedied by creating sortkeys. As a note, unlike at Wikipedia, this wiki does not have proper alphanumeric sorting. As a result, "1x11", "1x17", "1x100" and similar (1.11, C1E11, etc.) will not sort into the correct order. Adding a  does not remedy this.

So, the sortkeys cannot be named in this schema. While this is not a problem when a table is dealing with only one campaign at a time, it is problematic when attempting to sort a column that involves episodes from multiple campaigns. To solve this, use a sortkey that converts each episode into a number of thousand, where the first numeral is the number of the campaign and the next three numerals are the episode number with leading zeroes. When this schema is used, Specials can be noted as demicals, where the whole number is the episode in a main campaign preceding it and the decimal is how many specials after that episode it is, i.e. is the third special after 1x115 and so it can be sorted as "1115.3". Yes, this behavior is inconsistent with the above, but converting everything to decimals even with  breaks the sorting where having only occasional decimals does not.

When applied:

Real-world date formatting
The wiki formats dates in ISO 8601 in tables and infoboxes, that is YYYY-MM-DD format. This ensures that dates are unambiguous in a way that MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY formats are not, and this formatting is more concise and has a reliable width. Please note that some templates, such as Template:Infobox episode and Template:Episode table entry, convert input dates to display consistent to logged-in user preferences and as ISO 8601 to logged-out users. Please see those templates and the blog post "User blog:FreckledMcCree/Magically Converting Date Formats" for details.

Sometimes it is necessary to use dates in prose. In this case, use MDY formatting without abbreviations or ordinals, i.e. "August 3, 2021", to remain consistent with the wiki's preference for American English spelling. Avoid "August 3rd, 2021" and "Aug. 3, 2021".

Times should be conveyed in a 24-hour clock and in PST, i.e. "19:00 PST".