Talk:Formatting Examples

Purpose

This page is intended to serve as a collection of examples of correct ways to format content while working at DP. Most examples are drawn from posts in the DP fora by more or less experienced DPers. The intention is that all the examples include show correct formatting according to the current guidelines and current DP practice.

Layout

The examples are presented as a series of wiki tables. Each line of a table consists of four cells. The first holds simply a line number (or other identification). The second holds a representation of the scan of the content being formatted. In many cases this will be an image, either snipped form an actual scan, or an imitation scan created with an image editor. The third shows the correct markup of the text. The fourth cell holds comments on the issues involved, and usually a link to the forum post or thread where the issue was discussed, and on which the example is based.

To avoid excessive wrapping, the image call and the markup cell are stacked above one another, so each table "line" technically consists of two table rows. To help distinguish them, the "scan" cell has a blue-grey background, while the "markup" cell has a light green (to indicate that it is correct) background.

Force line breaks at appropriate points with <br/> tags, particualrly in the "markup" section, but also in the "image" section (if you are not using an actual image). Do not depend on the way the wrapping happens to come out -- it will be different in a different browser or if a longer example is added to the same table later.

Try not to create examples whose "markup" is excessivly wide, as this squeezes the remarks column. Rework examples to have larger numbers of shorter lines, unless this changes the point of the example.

The "Markup" section will display in DPCustomMono2 font if it is installed, and in a fixed-width font otherwise.

Templates

To keep the table format consistent, and to avoid having to to type in lots of repetitive wiki table syntax, this page uses a series of templates. Each table starts with a call to Template:Example-Start, which sets up the table and creates the header line. Then each body line is created with a call to Template:Example-Line. The parameters to this set the content and to some extent the layout of the cells in the line. Finally the table is closed by a call to Template:Example-End.

The uses and parameters of these templates are documented in Template talk:Example-Start and Template talk:Example-Line. Note that an unclosed link or unescaped pipe symbol (|) in the parameters to any of these templates, or a failure to close the template call with }} can produce some very odd-looking table displays. It is worth doing a preview when adding a table or a line.

Template:Guidelines-quote is used to emphasize and consistantly style direct quotes from the Formatting Guidelines.

Overall Discussion

Please comment on this page, what it should contain, and how it should look, here. DESiegel60

Discussion of Specific Examples

Please comment on the merits or problems of the proofing used in specific examples here. DESiegel60