Wiki Life: Attention to Detail

There is a saying, "Looks aren't everything".

That saying is true for wiki articles. There are many excellent articles in the Wiki that have great content, but don't look "the best".

While it's great that the content has been written down and added to the wiki, we should all continue to strive to present information in a neat, structured format, following the Wiki guidelines. 

Often, the only difference between an "OK" article, and great article, is attention to small details.

Attention to detail can make a really big difference to how an article is perceived by a reader, conveys professionalism, and show we have pride in our wiki!

Some of those finer details are listed here:

  1. Spelling

    Correct spelling is something easy to do. Most (if not all) modern browsers underline spelling mistakes, and even offer corrections. If you're unsure about the spelling (or meaning) of a word, use a word processor (like MS Word), or Google/Bing to lookup the spelling and meaning of a word.

  2. Grammar

    Getting the correct grammar can be a little more challenging than spelling. Especially for those authors who translate articles, or write in a second language. However, there are tools out there that can help, like word processors and online services (try googling / binging “grammar tools”).

  3. Size of images

    Try to format the images you use to ensure they are quick to download, and easy to process by a browser. I wrote a post on this here: Wiki Life: A Picture is Worth a 1000 Words

  4.  Paragraph spacing

    Breaking up large paragraphs into smaller paragraphs can make an article much easier (and appealing) to read! Check your article to make sure the paragraph spacing is consistent.

  5.  Font types and sizes

    Keeping font sizes and typefaces consistent helps maintain readability. If you copy and paste text from another source such as a blog post or word document, always strip out the formatting. See this post for more information: Wiki Life: Cut’N’Paste

  6. Tags

    Tags are quick and easy to add to an article. They really help to improve the "findability" of wiki articles. Tags can be used to filter thousands of wiki articles to a subset of articles. Adding the right tags to your article will help your audience find your article!

  7. Title, and Title Casing

    There is guidance on Titles and Title casing here: It's a small detail, but a title is normally the first part of your article that will be read, usually from search results. Making sure your title accurately conveys your articles contents!

  8. Does the TOC render correctly (if you used one)

    A TOC (Table of Contents) can help a reader navigate your article! Sometimes the scripts that generate the TOC can produce some messy looking TOC's. The TOC can be fiddly to fix, but there is guidance on doing this, and one such article is here: Tips & Tricks to Fix the Wiki Article TOC (Table of Contents)

See Also:

  • Wiki Life: Planning a Great Article
  • Wiki Life: Get to the point, keep it short!
  • Wiki Life: Format.Code()
  • Wiki Life: Cut'N'Paste
  • Wiki Life: A Picture is Worth a 1000 Words