Wikipedia:Article series

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This page is part of the Manual of Style, and is considered a guideline for Wikipedia. The consensus of many editors formed the conventions described here, and Wikipedia articles should heed these guidelines. Before making any major changes to these guidelines, please use the discussion page to ensure that your changes reflect consensus.

Article series are useful for tying together information on very broad subjects. For example, the article Israeli-Palestinian conflict could contain a table that provides links to all the major issues surrounding that subject. Long articles about a general topic can also be broken up to form a series, such as History of Brazil.

1 Breaking up long articles
2 Article series boxes
3 See also

[edit] Breaking up long articles

As young articles grow in length, they should initially be divided into sections. As the article continues to grow, it can eventually be broken up into a series of articles (called "sub-articles"), each with a short, useful title, focusing on specific areas of the topic. Typically, this is done by turning each of the original sections into its own article. Don't split a medium length article into a series of stubs unless more information can be added, and the sub articles become a reasonable length.

[edit] Overview article

The original article (referred to as the "overview article") should be replaced with a summary of the topic overall and summaries of each of the sub-articles. See Wikipedia:Summary style (History of Brazil is a good example).

Overview articles should include:

A navigation box (either at the start of the See also section or as a footer) - linking to the sub articles
A "Related topics" section at the bottom (linking to the sub-articles and other articles in a broader series, such as "History of South America")
A Table of Contents (TOC) which includes the names of the sub articles as top level sections (these link to sections in the current article, with the main article on the topic linked in italics at the top of these sections - see next point)
- In each section, a summary of the related sub-article, and a link to the sub-article in italics. You can use this template for the link - {{Main}}.

[edit] Sub-articles

The sub-articles include detailed information on a specific area, summarised in the overview article. Sub-articles should include:

The same navigation box as the main article
Sections & a TOC (if a sub-article is too short to include sections it should probably not exist)
Sub-articles are one of a few instances where an exception to the common names principle for article naming is sometimes acceptable, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Subsidiary articles. Nonetheless, always choose the simplest article name that is in accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)

[edit] Elements to address

Navigation links between the articles (in the navigation links section of each article, typically the See also or footer section)
Top-of-page introduction paragraphs for each article (above the TOC)
Size of each article (make sure it is appropriate i.e. not too small or too large)
Guidelines for dealing with Talk pages (i.e. general discussion should occur on the overview article's Talk page)

[edit] Article series boxes

Navigation between articles in a series is achieved with templates known as Article series boxes. Use the same template for all articles in the series - there is no need for a separate template for the overview article.

[edit] A vertical series box

This article is part of
the U.S. History
series.

Native Americans in the United States

Timeline · Topics

Include in article using the following syntax: {{Ushistory}}

[edit] Source in template

See Template:Ushistory

{| cellpadding="1" style="float: right; border: 1px solid #8888aa; background: #f7f8ff; 
padding: 5px; font-size: 85%; margin: 0 15px 0 15px;"
| style="background: #ccf; text-align: center;" | '''This article is part of'''
<br>'''the [[History of the United States|U.S. History]]'''<br>'''series.'''
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[Native Americans in the United States|Pre - Colonial America]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[Colonial America]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1776–1789)| 1776–1789]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1789–1849)| 1789–1849]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1849–1865)| 1849–1865]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1865–1918)| 1865–1918]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1918–1945)| 1918–1945]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1945–1964)| 1945–1964]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1964–1980)| 1964–1980]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1980–1988)| 1980–1987]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[History of the United States (1988–present)|  1988–present]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[Timeline of United States history|Timeline]] · 
[[List of United States history articles|Topics]]
|}<noinclude>[[Category:United States navigational boxes|History]]</noinclude>

[edit] Footer boxes

Footer boxes may contain links about a broader topic. For example the footer of The Netherlands shows all countries of the European Union - as The Netherlands is a member state. These boxes are created by inserting the template {{NavigationBox}} and adding the relevant information.

[edit] Blended series tables

This article is part of the

History of France series.

Gaul

Franks

France in the Middle Ages

France during World War II

Fourth Republic

Fifth Republic

This article is part of the

History of Germany series.

Generally this syntax is deprecated, because it does not lend itself to using identical templates, and thus is highly fragile

It is also possible to place an article in two different series. For example, Franks is part of both the History of France and History of Germany series.