Article style guide

Articles on paxabyssi.com/articles follow the wiki's style guide for voice, house style and honesty, plus the rules on this page. The format is Pax Markdown without frontmatter; the article's fields carry the rest.

Shape of a feature

• Title (up to 200 characters) and a kicker, the short section label above it.
• Standfirst: one or two sentences under the headline that say what the piece is about and why it matters.
• In Brief: up to four short sentences summarising the argument.
• Body: 1,800 to 3,500 words, in sections with ## headings. At least one ::figure for every 600 words or so, one or two :::callout{type=science} boxes, and pull quotes as :::pullquote.
• Hero image from the media library, with its own alt text.
• References: CSL-JSON items, cited in the body as :cite[id].
• Related wiki pages, so readers can go deeper.

Devlogs and news can be shorter and need no hero or In Brief box.

Figures

• Upload the image first (media_upload, with its credit line, licence, source type and source page), then place it with ::figure{src="File:Name.png" alt="What it shows" caption="One sentence saying what the reader is looking at."}.
• Credit and licence come from the media record. Never write them into the caption.
• NASA images are public domain (credit NASA and the mission). ESA/Webb, ESA/Hubble and ESO images are CC BY 4.0, credited exactly as their pages state. Plain esa.int images are not allowed unless marked CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Never use imagery from other games.

Bylines

Articles and devlogs are by "the Pax Abyssi team"; science features may carry the byline "Pax Abyssi Science Desk". Name a contributor only when the studio asks for it.

Before publishing

The validation report must be clean: no em dashes in any field, every figure with alt text, every citation in the references, every image in the library with an allowed licence. article_create_draft and article_update_draft return the report; each problem carries a hint. Read the preview URL before article_publish.