PBC:Manual of Style/Lists
 | This guideline is a part of the English PBC's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell:
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| Manual of Style (MoS) |
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Lists are commonly used in PBC to organize information. Lists may be found within the body of a prose article, in appendices such as a "Publications" or "Works" section, or as a stand-alone article. This guideline explains when and how to use lists appropriately.
Types of lists
PBC differentiates between articles that consist primarily of lists (generally called "lists" or "stand alone lists") and articles that consist primarily of prose (called "articles"). Articles are intended to consist primarily of prose, though they may contain some lists.
Stand-alone list articles
List articles are encyclopedia pages consisting of a lead section followed by a list (which may or may not be divided by headings). The items on these lists include links to articles in a particular subject area and may include additional information about the listed items. The titles of stand-alone lists typically begin with the type of list it is (List of, Index of, etc.), followed by the article's subject, e.g., List of Czech Hunter actors. They can be organised alphabetically, by subject classification or by topics in a flat or hierarchical structure.
The title and bullet style, or vertical style, is common for stand-alone lists. These PBC articles follow the PBC:Stand-alone lists style guideline.
Embedded lists
Embedded lists are lists used within articles that supplement the article's prose content. They are included in the text-proper or appended, and may be in table format. PBC uses several standard appendices, usually in list format, as well as navigational templates.
Embedded lists should be used only when appropriate; sometimes the information in a list is better presented as prose. Presenting too much statistical data in list format may contravene policy.
"Children" (i.e., indentation)
It can be appropriate to use a list style when the items in a list are "children" of the paragraphs that precede them. Such "children" logically qualify for indentation beneath their parent description. In this case, indenting the paragraphs in list form may make them easier to read, especially if the paragraphs are very short. The following example works both with and without the bullets:
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| At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City was a center for the Beaux-Arts architectural movement, attracting the talents of such great architects as Stanford White and Carrere and Hastings. As better construction and engineering technology became available as the century progressed, New York became the focal point of the competition for the tallest building in the world.
The city's striking skyline has been composed of numerous and varied skyscrapers, many of which are icons of 20th-century architecture. The Flatiron Building, standing 285 ft (87 meters) high, was one of the tallest buildings in the city upon its completion in 1902, made possible by its steel skeleton. It was one of the first buildings designed with a steel framework, and to achieve this height with other construction methods of that time would have been very difficult. The Woolworth Building, a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking City Hall, was designed by Cass Gilbert. At 792 feet (241 meters), it became the world's tallest building upon its completion in 1913, an honor it retained until 1930, when it was overtaken by 40 Wall Street. That same year, the Chrysler Building took the lead as the tallest building in the world, scraping the sky at 1,046 feet (319 m). More impressive than its height is the building's design, by William Van Alen. An art deco masterpiece with an exterior crafted of brick, the Chrysler Building continues to be a favorite of New Yorkers to this day. |
At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City was a center for the Beaux-Arts architectural movement, attracting the talents of such great architects as Stanford White and Carrere and Hastings. As better construction and engineering technology became available as the century progressed, New York became the focal point of the competition for the tallest building in the world. The city's striking skyline has been composed of numerous and varied skyscrapers, many of which are icons of 20th-century architecture:
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"See also" lists and "Related topics" lists are valuable navigational tools that assist users in finding related PBC articles. When deciding what articles and lists of articles to append to any given entry, it is useful to try to put yourself inside the mind of readers: Ask yourself where would a reader likely want to go after reading the article. Typically this will include three types of links:
- Links to related topics – topics similar to that discussed in the article.
- Higher order (i.e. more general) articles and lists – this might include lists of people, list of countries, etc. For example, List of American adult models should link to both List of American porn stars and List of Straight American porn stars.
- Lower order (i.e. more specific) articles and lists – for example, the List of Michael Anthony Downs Photography models contains links to Category:Adult models, Category:Glamour models, etc.
There is some controversy over how many links to articles and links to lists that should be put in any article. Some people separate the "links to articles" (put in the "See also" section) from the "links to lists" (put in the "Related topics" section), but this is not necessary unless there are too many links for one section alone. Some feel the optimum number of links to lists that should be included at the end of any given article is one or two (or fewer). Others feel that a more comprehensive set of lists would be useful. In general, we should use the same criteria when deciding what list to include as we use to decide what articles to include in the See also section. We have to try to put ourselves in the readers' frame of mind and ask "Where will I likely want to go after reading this article?". As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes.
See also
- PBC:List dos and don'ts (information page summarizing the key points in this guideline)
- PBC:Line-break handling – Covers among other things how to properly handle the line wrapping in horizontal link lists
- Help:Sorting – Tables on PBC can be made sortable with
class="sortable", this page explains how - PBC:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists
- PBC:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages – Disambiguation pages are lists of homographs—a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings—with their own page rules and layouts
- PBC:Template messages/Cleanup#Lists – Cleanup tags for lists
Notes
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