Manual:Introductory Essays
Pages for Introductory essays are to be assigned names using the following formula: Chinese sources on [Region/Theme]. For locations within China, the page name should be Chinese sources on and from [Province/Location].
The titles should use sentence case, but Themes should be capitalized for emphasis. Be sure to set the Location or Theme as the word for sorting orderin the Settings menu: e.g., Chinese sources on Africa should be sorted as Africa.
Refer to the standards of style in the relevant section of this Manual, such as those for the use of Chinese characters and romanization in-text. Unlike a published essay, the Wiki version will require attention to the sections outlined below.
Lead section
The first line of an introductory essay should be the author name (first and last) followed by a comma and the institutional affiliation. As with all in-text links, the author name should be linked to the author’s page within the Wiki, not an outside source.
As with all entries, the “lead section” that serves as an intro before the first section heading (and consequently before the contents box). It can be one to two paragraphs depending on how the essay was written.
The first occurrence of the theme or region in the essay (preferably in the first one or two lines) should be formatted in bold (e.g., the lead section of this manual entry).
Headings and paragraph structure
If the author has not provided section headings, the editor will suggest headings that should ultimately be approved by the author. Longer essays may require subheadings.
All headings and subheadings should be in sentence case.
Headings and subheadings should strictly follow the heading hierarchy provided by Mediawiki for the purpose of the contents box. This will preserve the visual hierarchy, especially if the skin of the Wiki is modified or changed for another one.
Each section or subsection should have two to three paragraphs. But too many headings and subheadings may be too distracting for the reader. The editor will suggest paragraph breaks if needed.
Though this is at the discretion of each editor, general approach has been to introduce headings based on dynastic periodization and/or themes. Refer to existing essays for examples.
If there is a section giving an overview of the relevant sources, do isolate and title appropriately. If possible, use paragraph structure or bullets so that each source category is visually identifiable. Each source category should be in bold. Refer to Chinese sources on Piracy for an example.
[Issue: some authors have not included a source overview section in their introductory essays, should we ask them to do so?]
Images
The number and size of images should be proportional to the length of the essay. If the author has not provided sufficient images or any at all, use access to the Wiki commons (which you can search directly within our Wiki or from the commons portal) to search for images you can suggest accompany the text. As with all other suggested changes, the author has ultimate creative control. Do follow the general guidelines for sizes, quality, captioning, etc. established in the relevant section, and based on the image guidelines in the Wikipedia Manual of Style.
As with all entries in general, if the author or editor has found outside images, check whether a copy exists already in Wikimedia Commons. (It probably does.) If it doesn’t, make sure that there are no copyright issues (as with images from the Chinese internet). Everything we upload on our site becomes part of Wikimedia Commons and should comply with Creative Commons licensing.
Links
All sources that have an entry in the Handbook and are mentioned in the essay, should be linked. The same for regions or themes in the text that have introductory essays. You can also link to one of the Category pages if helpful (e.g., Zheng Chenggong), but do so sparsely since that is what Categories are for.
Though "overlinking" is unlikely to be a problem if in-text links are kept internal, remember the common-sense guidance on linking in the Wikipedia Manual of Style: “Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.” Avoid links in the lead section if they are distracting.
Refer to the general policy on in-text links and footnote links.
[Issue 1: I suggest linking only to articles within our Wiki as part of text and using footnotes for links outside the site. “Interwiki” links could be useful, but I don’t think we should link to Wikipedia or Baidu, for that matter. Issue 2:What should or should not be linked in the footnotes is another question. Will we go and find links to every single article cited? Do we include links to articles that are behind a paywall or only those which are open access?]
Categories
Add all relevant categories mentioned in the text (except for specific centuries), but be sure these are listed in the following order, and then, always alphabetically.
- Chinese provinces. Subregional units should be nested under their corresponding province, also in alphabetical order.
- Other regions. Subregional units should be nested under their corresponding region, also in alphabetical order.
- Themes (and nested subthemes)
- Historical figures
- Periodization (dynastic only)
- Genres
- Author(s)
Notes block
The penultimate section will be the footnotes, and should be under a section heading titled Notes. Make sure to transfer any parenthetical notations within the text to footnote format. [Issue: While some intro essays have plenty of notes, others have none.]
List of sources
The final section is to be titled List of sources, which are organized within a table. The table should have a heading row and be set as sortable, but not collapsible. Links to individual source entries are to be added to the pinyin title. The order of the columns should be as follows.
The order reflects the precedence given to the English title in-text. Title (Shuming 書名) in the first appearance, and Shuming thereafter [Issue: I am in favor of this rather than the inverse]. For readability within the table, I suggest that the pinyin and not the English be italicized.
| Title (English) | Title” (pinyin) | Title (hanzi) | Author (pinyin) | Author (hanzi) | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brief History of Wei | Weilüe | 魏略 | Yuhuan | 魚豢 | 3rd c. CE |
- Title (English): Translated titles given in Title Case and plain text. [Issue: when authors do not provide their own translations, what should be the source? Or will it be to the individual discretion of each editor?)
- Title” (pinyin): In customary sentence case. italicized. Linked.
- Title (hanzi): Currently traditional characters, but source entries should give both traditional and simplified.
- Author (pinyin): Family name first, as customary.
- Author (hanzi): Traditional characters
- Date: This is difficult to standardize since it may come as a specific or approximate year; interval between years or decades; or dynasty.
- Make sure to use circa and not "approximately" and that this is uniformly abbreviated as ca.
- Always use n-dashes (–) and not hyphens (-)
- Use dynasty names only (e.g., "Tang" but not "Tang dynasty")
- And so on... though better reserved for a section devoted to format
