Cookbook:Manual of Style
Cookbook | Recipes | Ingredients
This page describes the stylistic conventions that should be used for pages in the Cookbook. It is a living document, so it may change over time to reflect the de facto state of the Cookbook and the consensus standards created by its contributors.
Page Naming[edit | edit source]
Case[edit | edit source]
The de-facto naming convention for all Cookbook pages is title case. Based on common style guides,[1] this means that the first word of the title as well as all major words (i.e. not articles, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions shorter than four letters) should be capitalized.
Recipes[edit | edit source]
Language[edit | edit source]
Recipes should be titled according to their traditional name, their origin, or their ingredients. Avoid naming recipes for people, unless they are well-known by that name.
Recipes with a non-English name that have a common English name should be named with their common English name. For example, the primary name for Cookbook:Khaeng Keaw Wan should be Cookbook:Thai Green Curry. If necessary or desired, a redirect from the name in the original language can be created. In cases where the non-English name is the common name, that name should be used, as in Cookbook:Huevos Rancheros.
Recipes names with special characters (diacritics, etc) should be primarily spelled with simple ASCII characters and a redirect should be created with the special characters included.
Special Diets[edit | edit source]
Recipes for a special diet that are substantially adjusted variations of a normal recipe should be denoted by the diet name in parentheses after the name of the recipe. For example, a vegan variation of Cookbook:Chili would be Cookbook:Chili (Vegan); a gluten-free variation of Cookbook:Brownies would be Cookbook:Brownies (Gluten-Free); a lactose-free variation of Cookbook:Milkshake would be Cookbook:Milkshake (Lactose-Free). Recipes that adhere to a special diet, but are not variations for that specific diet should not be named in this fashion; instead only the appropriate category should be added. Trivial variations should be listed on the recipe page itself.
Duplicate Recipes and Disambiguation Pages[edit | edit source]
When there is more than one recipe for a single type of food, there are several ways to resolve the situation:
- If one recipe is of poor quality, delete it.
- If one recipe can be expressed as a variation upon the other, include it in the variations section and delete the original.
- If the recipes can be merged into a single recipe, merge them and delete the originals.
- Create a disambiguation page for the 'abstract' type of food (using the {{cookdp}} template as a header) and give each recipe a unique name.
In the last case, the distinguishing name should be as descriptive of the unique qualities of the recipe as possible. This may be accomplished in the following ways:
- Variations: for example, a disambiguation page is Cookbook:Lasagne which links to Cookbook:Traditional Lasagne, Cookbook:Ricotta Lasagne, and Cookbook:Lasagne with bean sauce.
- Roman numerals: If there is not an appropriately descriptive way to distinguish the recipes, roman numerals should be used, as in Cookbook:Hummus I.
- Diet: if a recipe difference is noted by diet, proceed as above for special diets.
- Author: if a recipe is from a specific author (e.g. from a book in the public domain), include their surname as in Cookbook:Common Sauce (Hartshorne).
Additionally, a disambiguation page may be created with more information about a type of food, and this page should link to the various recipes for that dish. See, for example, Cookbook:Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Categories[edit | edit source]
Cookbook-related categories should capitalize the first but not following words.
With few exceptions (e.g. maintenance categories), recipe categories should follow the "____ recipes" naming format:
- Category:Egg recipes (by ingredient)
- Category:Italian recipes (by origin)
- Category:Vegan recipes (by diet)
- Category:Cake recipes (by recipe type)
- Category:Dessert recipes (by meal type)
For ingredient categorization, a plural form is generally used, as with:
Page Formatting and Layout[edit | edit source]
Recipes should be formatted according to the recipe template, and ingredients according to the ingredient template.
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ "Title Capitalization Rules | Title Case Converter". titlecaseconverter.com. Retrieved 2024-01-29.