Help:Names

Spelling, Special Characters, Punctuation and Capitalization

Follow in-game capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation!

Spelling especially applies to the use of "Special Characters" (diacritics). If you do not have an international keyboard, vowels with Accent, Grave, Circumflex, Umlaut and others are available at the bottom of the editing screens and should be simply "clicked" on to insert the character into the text, see Help:Spelling and Punctuation.

Exceptions

While we use spelling and capitalization of names as they appear in-game, there are some exceptions where we "correct" in-game mistakes:

• For names with dashes, we never capitalize the first letter after a dash. Example: We write Rune-inscribed Brass Earring for the item which in-game reads Rune-Inscribed Brass Earring.
• NPC surnames, as in Lotho Sackville-Baggins, have both components capitalized.
• For location names with or without "The" we try to follow in-game practice. However, remember that Turbine has repeatedly added and withdrawn these The-s and sometimes it also differs by where you are located. We try to add Redirect pages to handle those with or without The.
• Notice: For interiors we always use the indoor version. If a sign reads "Some Cool Name" but indoor it reads "Any Other Name" we use the indoor name. E.g. The Ivy Bush while sign reads "The Ivy Bush Inn".

Remember, in-game naming has not been consistent over the years but has been changed, hence you will surely find odd-balls. If so, read those articles' Discussion (talk) pages to find clues, if any, or use it to ask for advice. Feel free to use the Discussion page of this article for general questions.

Singular or Plural

When creating a new page its name should always be singular, with some rare exceptions. This is basically since a page is about one entity, even if several of the same could exist. Secondly, it is much easier to add an extra "s" to a link than having to use the workaround with a display-text; compare the following: "one [[Rangers|Ranger]]" versus the opposite "several [[Ranger]]s".

Exception: Creature species sometimes have summary pages and they are in plural. Chiefly it is this way to avoid nasty naming conflicts, examples: there is a wolf species in the Shire named Wolf, compare Warg with Wargs, compare Craban with Crebain, etc. Sometimes it is a judgement call whether a page is a summary page which possibly could be in plural or not, but if you are uncertain you'd better use singular to start with.

Disambiguation

Occasionally two or more articles are given the same name, it may be NPCs, creatures, deeds and titles, etc. If they truly are different articles we will create individual pages for each of those and then we need to handle the upcoming "disambiguation". However...

• ... if a NPC is one and the same but appears at different locations we use one page and create sections for the locations where he appears, see Halbarad for a lengthier example.
• ... if the same-specie creature/mob appears at different locations and with reasonably different values for Level and/or Morale/Power, we create duplicate pages for those "sub-species". They are often linked to different quests, etc. Use common sense.
• ... if a same-name bosses appear wherever, we create duplicate pages for those. They may need special notes about tactics, quests, rewards, etc.

Creating different pages include three distinct steps which we describe below. These three steps are important, per duplicate page of course.

• Naming of those duplicate pages
• Cross-lining those pages
• Consider moving the original page to avoid future linking mistakes

Duplicate Names

Duplicates are handled by appending a specifier within parentheses to the name; the specifier is different from case to case, see below.

• Capitalize the specifier, e.g. (Deed) but not (deed).
• Always add a "space" between the name and the embraced specifier.

Creatures and NPCs

Use (Location) as the specifier. Usually the location is the name of the Region. For name-clashes within a region, use Area, or the name of the most precise location or dungeon if that is required. In the end of the day, use something that makes sense. See also Help:Creatures#Same name Issues.

Deeds, Skills, Traits, Effects, etc

Use (Deed), (Skill), (Trait), (Effect), etc., as the specifier.

Exception: Duplicated effect names with different buff/damage types should share the same page with multiple Effect templates showing the different characteristics. It is otherwise very hard to come up with intuitive and clarifying specifiers.

Items

Use (Level X) as the specifier, where X is a number.

Effects

Use (Effect) as the specifier.

Examples of Specifier Usage

NPCs:

• Wíli versus Wíli (Twenty-first hall)

Creatures:

• Dourhand Miner (Forochel) versus Dourhand Miner (North Downs)

Deeds:

• Deadly Precision (Deed)

Items

• Item:Shoulders of the Aurochs (Level 50) versus Item:Shoulders of the Aurochs (Level 60)

Effects:

• Call to the Valar (Effect), which happens to be the result of the Call to the Valar skill.

Cross-linking Duplicate Pages

Duplicate pages must link to each other to help visitors navigating to the correct page. Use the Template:Other which is put topmost on each one of the duplicate pages. The result is that all of them link to each other. Examples:

{{Other|the stable-master of Thorin's Gate|the quest-giver in the Twenty-first hall|Wíli (Twenty-first hall)}}
{{Other|the wolf den in The Shire|the wolf den in Bree-land|Wolf Den (Bree-land)}}

Which gives:

This page is about the stable-master of Thorin's Gate. For the quest-giver in the Twenty-first hall, see Wíli (Twenty-first hall).

This page is about the wolf den in The Shire. For the wolf den in Bree-land, see Wolf Den (Bree-land).

These examples of course have corresponding mark-ups on their counterpart pages.

If 3 or more duplicate pages appear:

• Move the original page using a specifier (or create a new page with copied content).
• Edit/remake the Redirect page that was generated by the move into a disambiguation page for the different pages (or edit the original page):

Make it a list of links to the different pages with a very short description. See example: Angmarim Scout

Add the page to [[Category:Disambiguation Pages]].

• For each of the pages, use the Template:Other as usual but link to the "disambiguation page" and only to that page. Example:

{{Other|the mob in Eregion|Angmarim Scouts at many other locations|Angmarim Scout}}

See many examples at Category:Disambiguation Pages.

Notice, it is allowed to move any original page to a specifier-page also when there are only two duplicate pages, and delete the page without specifier, that way avoiding what is implied in the final section.

Avoid future linking mistakes

When creating duplicate pages and not moving the original page to a more specific name there is a risk that future editors by mistake will link to the original page rather than the wanted specific-name page. This is a real risk, historically proven true. Hence...

Consider moving also the original page to a specified name, per the above suggestions. Suppress creating a redirect because that will cause the very same mistakes we want to avoid. Use the "what links here" feature (in the left column) and correct all links that reference the old page-name. Verify that those links do not link to any of the existing specific-name pages or to your new page ... if so, you just found one or more of those errors we want to avoid and you should correct the erratic link(s).

This suggestion is valid for any page which has same-name duplicate pages, however, this suggestion is new and many old pages exist.

Finally

Remember, when creating a quest, location, mob, or whatever page, you must always follow all links you add to a page to ensure that you end up at the intended page. Too often we find links that go to some other same-name-page.