Valve Developer Community:Style guide

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This article details the conventions concerning the styling of pages on the Valve Developer Community. Considering that people have their own writing styles, and that they learn differently from each other, then that means there will be noticeable opposition in terms of opinions, quality of articles, and cooperation.

This guide should hopefully aid in dispelling that notion, and therefore standardize a consistent style of writing and formatting throughout the wiki. However, covering all situations concerning styling would take an extended period of time, and as such the following content is only meant to act as a reference for content specific to the Valve Developer Community.

For a more advanced style guide, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

Article titles

The title of an article should be short and sweet. As a general rule of thumb, the starting character of each world in a page title should be capitalized, and the following characters should be lowercase. This isn't a necessity, and there may be exceptions to this rule, but doing it this way helps maintain consistency.

Redundant or superfluous wording, such as "most important", "correct" or "absolutely" should be avoided, as should the use of pronunciation marks, as they superficially inflate the importance of an article.

Also keep in mind that an article should cover one topic only, and it should do that well. An article should not cover various subjects or topics, as doing so would obfuscate information.

Here are some examples of good titles:

• Hammer Editor
• Source
• Steam Deck
• Team Fortress 2
• Lighting

And here are some examples of bad titles:

• How to create your first Hammer Editor map properly! ("properly" is superfluous and opinionated)
• My favorite games
• Baked lighting - guide and comparison to engine lighting
• Why I love the source engine
• List of noteworthy character quotes

As an exception to the above, user namespace pages may be named as you see fit, just as long as the names for the pages aren't vulgar, offensive or juvenile. E.g: User:Example/My guide to cubemaps (Completely acceptable pagename).

Wording

Valve Developer Community

When referring to the name of the wiki in articles, it should be used in one of two ways:

Short hand

VDC, VDC Wiki, or simply Wiki.

Long hand

Valve Developer Community or Valve Developer Community Wiki.

Images

Various images that have been uploaded to the wiki should be designated their own prefix in order to distinguish them from other files, and to aid in the categorization and the usage of such files on the wiki.

User images

• User avatars, e.g.: UserAvatar-Username
• User avatar frames, e.g.: UserAvatarFrame-Username
• User covers, e.g.: UserCover-Username

Logo and icon images

• Use the Logo- prefix for logo images, e.g.: "Logo-valve"
• And use the Icon- prefix for icon images, e.g.: "Icon-help"

Software images

For images that are intended to be used on software pages, make sure you specify the correct prefix for your images.

• Specify Software Cover- for software covers, e.g.: "Software Cover - Half-Life"
• Specify Screenshot #- for software page screenshots, e.g.: "Screenshot 1 - Half Life"