User:OrenBochman/Style Odds and Ends

Miscellaneous edit

Formatting issues edit

  • Generally avoid specifying. Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and usually should not be specified. If you absolutely must specify a font size, use a relative size (font-size: 80%), not an absolute size (font-size: 8pt).
  • Custom font styles. Use judiciously, since they reduce:
    • consistency—the text will no longer look uniform;
    • usability—people with custom stylesheets (for accessibility reasons, for example) may have difficulty in overriding them, and they might clash with a different skin.*
  • Color coding. Generally don't use it alone to convey information. Many colors are not accessible to people with color blindness or on black-and-white printouts. Avoid using shades of red and green in the same display. Viewing with Vischeck can help to improve the use of colors in this respect.**
  • Keep markup simple. Use the simplest markup to display information in a useful and comprehensible way. Markup may appear differently in different browsers. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly and only with good reason. Minimizing markup in entries allows easier editing. Don't use the CSS float or line-height properties, because they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used.*
  • Scrolling lists. Scrolling lists and boxes that toggle text-display between hide and show are acceptable in infoboxes and navigation boxes, but should never be used in article prose or references because of issues with readability, accessibility, and printing.*
  • Invisible comments. Editors use them to communicate with each other within article text in edit mode. They are useful for flagging an issue or leaving instructions about part of the text, where this is more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page. Don't use them so much that they clutter, and check that they don't change the formatting, such as by introducing unintended white space in display mode. To enter an invisible comment, enclose it within <!-- and -->; e.g., <!--If you change this section title, please also change the links to it on the pages ...-->.*
  • Tables. How to construct them is explained here and here.

Pronunciation** edit

Use the IPA. For ease of understanding across varieties of English, fairly broad IPA transcriptions are usually provided for English pronunciations.***

Discussion edit

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