Help:Spelling and Punctuation

This page is about spelling and punctuation. See also page names, help topics, and manual of style.

Professor J. R. R. Tolkien made heavy use of special characters in his books and other texts. This is reflected in the game.

At Lotro-Wiki we use special characters, spelling, and capitalization as it shows in-game. Not only in page names but in all texts, anywhere.

Furthermore, to honour Prof. Tolkien we follow British spelling, grammar and style. The developers have done that really good in-game, but at Lotro-Wiki we will go the extra mile when the game falls short.

The site name itself has been defined in the magic word {{SITENAME}} and was agreed to be Lotro-Wiki.com.

Capitalization and Dashes

At Lotro-Wiki we use to "correct" in-game flaws.

For headers and page names:

• The first and last words must always be capitalized, plus all nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.
• Unless previous rule applies, functors (and, at, in, of, the, to, etc.) should always be lower-case, regardless of the game

For all text, anywhere:

• For names with dashes, always use lower-case after the dash, as in Rune-inscribed Brass Earring instead of "Rune-Inscribed Brass Earring"
• NPC surnames should have both components capitalized, as in Sackville-Baggins

Numbers and Numeric Ranges

• Numbers greater than one thousand should have a comma separator, as 2,145 or 15,901.
• Numeric ranges should ideally use a space on either side of the dash, for readability: 525 - 545 rather than 525-545. This is more evident with larger numbers: 12,547 - 12,701 vs 12,547-12,701.

Special Characters

So called "special characters" use diacritics and may look like: Á á Â â Ä ä É é Ê ê Ë ë Í í Î î Ï ï Ó ó Ô ô Ö ö Ú ú Û û Ü ü

The wiki-editor makes such characters available via two features. One is on the menu at the top of the editor, the "Special Characters" item. The other is below the editor's save button, the "Click here for more options!" For both features, click a character and it will be inserted at the position of the cursor.

Plural in Languages

Professor Tolkien invented many languages for his fictional worlds. It is said that he first created the language for the people he had in mind. And then wrote the stories.

Anyway... in-game many of those languages are seen, mainly Sindarin and Lossoth, but also some Black Speech, Quenya, etc. See languages for a few more.

In-game many names are in Sindarin, which has its own plural form.

Some examples:

• Craban -> Crebain
• Dúnadan -> Dúnedain
• Grodbog -> Gredbyg
• Morroval -> Merrevail
• Orch -> Yrch

Make certain the word is actually Sindarin. 'Urug' is and its plural is 'Yryg'. However, 'Uruk' is the Black Speech equivalent but 'Uruk' is given the Common Speech plural 'Uruks', which means 'Yryk' would be wrong.

Even if a few English plurals have come into common use, such as 'Balrogs', the preferred spelling at Lotro-Wiki is 'Belryg'.