Manual of Style

This is the Daybreak Wiki's Manual of Style, intended to provide a set of guidelines on the wiki's style and formatting for contributors.

Guidelines
By and large, the Daybreak Wiki follows stylistic and formatting standards similar to Halopedia's Manual of Style where applicable, though our stylistic rules are far less rigid, and standardization across pages isn't enforced. Known wiki best practices provide a good guideline as to how a typical page might be structured, but as long as an article makes sense in its own context and is readable, it's good enough.

Although encyclopedic language is the general standard, maintaining a thoroughly neutral voice is less important than on Halopedia or Wikipedia, and a more informal approach can be used if it serves a page's presentation. Articles should be coherent and readable, but they don't have to be clinical and boring.

Notability is also more flexible than most wikis. If there's enough to say about a subject or plans to expand on it in the future, it deserves its own page; a lot of this is up to the common sense of individual contributors. Meanwhile, not everything needs a page, and sometimes having secondary subjects on a list is enough, whereas for many minor details, a mention on the relevant page(s) is enough. Our resources are ultimately limited, so we can't describe every single part in the universe in detail. Such secondary elements (locations, characters, factions, technologies, etc.) can later be expanded upon by contributors, but there is no expectation that everything will be "filled out" or have its own page.

Perspective
The in-universe articles of the Daybreak wiki are generally presented from a third-person limited perspective; as a general rule, we know only what the UNSC and the Covenant know. The wiki itself is generally detached from any specific point of view, though there is an overall human bias in which names and terms take priority. Still, this is likewise flexible. Similar to 343i's approach on reference works like the 2022 Halo Encyclopedia, articles about Covenant subjects can be written in a tone and style evoking a Covenant point of view. From a framing standpoint, the wiki could be thought of as a collection of in-universe writings from myriad different sources, rather than a singular record formatted by the same author.

There is no fully-defined "present day" for the wiki's POV, but it can be assumed to be around the 2620s, coinciding with the dating of Project Footprint mentioned in Not All Who Wander.

Where possible or relevant, consider identifying the in-universe "sources" of a given bit of information, especially if said information is presented as controversial in-universe. For example, much of what we know about the Forerunners and other ancient civilizations is presented though this "modern" lens. Information may be intentionally left vague for stylistic or tonal reasons, or because it has not yet been defined by the project's authors. For example, Daybreak's "canon" stance is that the Forerunners originated as an offshoot population of Homo sapiens displaced from Earth by a precursor civilization, but the articles present this merely as the consensus within the scientific community while noting the various controversies involved in the matter, as opposed to a wholly unambiguous objective fact. The same applies to most of what we know about the other Antecedent cultures.

Note that while the above applies to the mainline articles, which are written in an in-universe style, out-of-universe guides (such as the Daybreak Reference Manual), project articles, and footnote sections may be more relaxed in the way they present information. Most notably, authors may (and are indeed encouraged to) freely add their own comments and thoughts in "Behind the scenes" sections to provide background for their writing decisions, including inspirations, trivia, anecdotes, etc.

Originality
Avoid copying content from Halopedia or any other website, unless it's your own material (e.g. on Halo Fanon) or the author has given you permission to use it. Project Daybreak-related material is generally assumed to be free to be added to the wiki, but it is considered good practice to ask the original creator before significantly altering or expanding on an original subject.