Style Guide:Real Person

This page is a Style Guide for articles about real people, both living and deceased. The purpose of this page is to provide authors and editors with visual and textual guidelines to improve consistency of formatting and ease of use. A contributor's implementation of these guidelines is recommended but not required.

Template
To promote formatting similarity among articles about real people, please implement the Real Person template by pasting the following code at the top of the article:

Enter as much information as possible, but do not remove any lines from the template. (Incomplete information will not be displayed in the saved version of the page.)

Opening paragraph
The opening paragraph should include as many of the following bits of information as possible:
 * 1) Name
 * 2) Nationality (the country of origin or citizenship, not to be confused with ethnicity)
 * 3) What the person has done
 * 4) Why the person is significant

Please note: birth and death dates are not necessary in this paragraph because those dates are part of the template and will be displayed in the information box at the right of the viewer's screen. However, if desired for emphasis, it is acceptable to include these dates in parentheses immediately following the individual's name.

Tense
Articles about real people who are living should be written in the present tense while articles about deceased people should be written in the past tense. Use the phrase, "is a former", when referring to a person who is still alive but has retired.

Dated information
Avoid phrases like "most recently" or "the current project" because that information will soon become outdated and therefore inaccurate. Try to use specific dates whenever possible. Terms like "in 2007" are much more appropriate than "this year".

Performing credits
The majority of the real people pages on the Puppet Wiki are going to be about puppeteers or other actors portraying characters. For puppeteers, consider listing that person's notable characters in a list like this one:

In this listing, it is assumed that the characters would have been voiced and performed by the person. On some occasions, the person may have performed part of the final character. In that case, make note of the differentiation in this manner:

Building credits
In the case where a person is known for building puppets, consider listing those puppets under a separate heading. Follow the Performing credits pattern above for listing these puppets.

Categorizing
It is important to place your article in a category so viewers can more easily find it. Browse the Category Index for the complete listing of categories. Make sure the person's name will be alphabetized correctly (by surname) in the category by formatting the category code as follows: