Piñata Journal:Style guide

This is the Piñata Journal Style Guide. It documents the conventions used for writing, naming, formatting, and linking across the wiki.

Piñata Journal is intended to function as an encyclopedia of the Viva Piñata series. Articles should document game mechanics, behavior, and content as they exist within the games themselves. They need not function as strategy guides or walkthroughs, as gameplay advice is often subjective and not in keeping with the site's goal of being a repository of knowledge.

Editors are encouraged to read this manual before contributing.

This document provides general guidance but cannot anticipate every situation. Where conventions are already established across multiple pages, they should not be changed without good reason. Proposed changes to established style should be discussed on article talk pages.

General writing style

Encyclopedic tone

Piñata Journal articles should be written in a clear, neutral, and informative style.

Avoid:

• Second-person perspective (e.g. "you")
• Player-directed advice
• Strategy recommendations
• Conversational tone
• Speculation or opinion
• Flavorful or narrative phrasing where mechanical description is sufficient

Articles should describe systems as they function in-game. Statements about efficiency, optimization, or recommended player behavior dip into subjective advice and therefore do not belong in fact-based articles.

Perspective

Articles should describe what occurs within the game world, not what the player should do.

Avoid:

• "Players must…"
• "The player can…"
• "You should…"

Instead:

• "A piñata will mature after completing the following:"
• "This behavior occurs when:"
• "The following conditions are required:"

Game titles and terminology

Official game titles

Use official English titles when referring to games.

The original game should be referred to as:

• Viva Piñata (2006)

This distinguishes it from the franchise title Viva Piñata.

Use the year on the first occurrence within an article. Subsequent mentions may omit the year if no ambiguity exists.

Example:

In Viva Piñata (2006), the Dragonache cannot be crated.

Abbreviations

Informal abbreviations such as:

• VP1
• VP Classic
• Classic
• TiP

should not be used in article prose.

Redirects may exist from common abbreviations to improve searchability. Unofficial fan terminology should be avoided in article titles and categories unless no official equivalent exists.

Localization changes

Viva Piñata (2006) and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise feature minor wording differences between their UK and US English releases (e.g. "bacon butty" vs. "bacon sandwich", "happy sweet" vs. "happy candy"). As the games were originally written in UK English and later localized for US audiences, this wiki uses UK English terminology by default (e.g. Happy Sweet) for the sake of consistency.

American English equivalents are documented in the In other languages section of each relevant page.

Article titles

• Titles should use official English names where available.
• Titles should be written in sentence case.
• Titles should generally be singular.
• Do not begin titles with "The", "A", or "An" unless it is part of the proper name.

Disambiguation using game titles in parentheses is preferred where necessary.

Examples:

• Dragonache
• List of piñata species by level

Linking

Only link to a given article once per section on first occurrence. Repeated linking within the same paragraph should be avoided. However, lists of related items may link consistently where appropriate.

Opening sentence

The subject of the article should appear in bold within the first sentence.

Example:

Dragonache is a species of piñata introduced in Viva Piñata (2006).

Capitalization

The following are capitalized:

• Piñata species names
• Character names
• Shop names
• Building names
• Garden areas
• Game titles

The following are not capitalized:

• piñata
• variant
• egg
• trick
• surface

Unofficial terminology should be lowercase unless part of an established proper noun.

Lore sections

Lore summaries should describe narrative events without referring to player agency.

Avoid:

• It is up to the player to…
• You must help…

Use:

• The events of the game follow…
• The gardener is tasked with…

Language

Serial commas should be used where appropriate.

Game titles are italicized.

Section headers are not italicized.