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This is the main page for the Ace Attorney Wiki's manual of style. Some of the rules are briefly outlined here, but other pages contain details on more involved subject matter.

Titles[]

In articles, the titles of games and episodes should be italicized (e.g. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, The First Turnabout) and written out in full at least once. This may be somewhat contrary to the common practice, which would be to surround the titles of episodes in quotes (e.g. "The First Turnabout"). Nonetheless, it has become the norm on this wiki to italicize even the titles of the episodes themselves, treating them as full works in and of themselves.

The titles of the chapters subdividing the episodes should be surrounded by quotation marks (e.g. "Welcome to Khura'in"). The titles of short episodes should also be surrounded by quotation marks (e.g. "In the Defendants' Antechamber").

Categories[]

Categorizing articles is very important and should be one of the first things you should think about when making a new article. Being in categories is a very easy way to get readers to find the article you worked so hard on. If an article is not categorized, it becomes very difficult to notice and find, especially if the article is on a less prominent subject. In this case, the article may never be improved or appreciated.

Ideally, each article should be categorized into "Category:[game in which the subject appears]" as well as any other category that is relevant to the article. Character articles should always be put directly into Category:Characters as well as any character subsets that exist.

Speculation[]

The Ace Attorney Wiki is generally not the place to record or discuss speculative information. Although everything involves speculation and subjective interpretation at some level, this should be minimized. Speculation related to the in-universe "lore" of the Ace Attorney series can easily be refuted by future additions to the lore (usually through new games) and may even confuse readers as to what is established fact. Other speculation tends to come in the form of claimed "references" to other media. Because the series has many actual references to other media, it can be tempting to see more "hidden" references. The problem with this is that the very act of looking for references will statistically lead to finding something that seems close enough to one. This is an example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy and should be avoided.

Editors should also not make a habit of noting unknown information, except in unavoidable cases such as having to include a character's unnamed sister-in-law in their list of relatives. This is to avoid judging which "unknowns" are more important than others, and to make a more coherent article-writing strategy. Additionally, mentioning unknown information tends to imply that it will or should be revealed at some point in the future. This is inadvisable as the writers of these games cannot account for every single question that could possibly come up in the universe they have created. As a general rule, invest time and energy into recording everything known, and invest none into noting the things that are not known. Another way of looking at it is that concentrating on the things known saves time and energy since there are fewer of them.

Occasionally, there can be conflicts within the plot. These should be mentioned and given context in the out-of-universe sections of articles. If possible, in-universe sections should make general statements that give no preference to the disputed options.

Analogy: Phoenix Wright was grown in a lab[]

Some things left unmentioned can seem extreme. For example, the character infobox has a field specifically titled "last known status" for which most characters in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles are listed as alive, and unnamed parents are only listed when they are explicitly referred to. Consider the possibility that Phoenix Wright was grown in a lab. Can this be refuted? Yes, he has mentioned a mother and he has at least one other ancestor. However, this is insufficient to refute this possibility or, maybe more importantly, prove that Phoenix Wright has a father at all, biological or otherwise. Speaking of his ancestor, can it really be proven that Ryunosuke Naruhodo is dead? One may protest that Ace Attorney is a grounded series that mostly deals with things that are possible in real life, and that may be true, but Ace Attorney is also a world containing highly intelligent and emotive robots in 2020, and holograms circa 1900.

The wiki used to make claims that Manfred von Karma adopted Miles Edgeworth. It is a very clean and satisfying explanation, leaving no loose ends as to why Edgeworth transferred schools after the DL-6 Incident with no explanation other than it had to do with his father's death. The anime depicts Edgeworth living with von Karma and his daughter Franziska, which seems to indicate that this was an all but stated fact. Then again, maybe Edgeworth has a mother or some other caregiver who wanted or had to move after DL-6 for unknown reasons. Maybe he was grown in a lab.

Name origins[]

Character articles have name sections, which are meant to describe the origins and meanings behind the names of each character in every language. These sections should be written in bullet-point form, and should generally explain either the etymology of a name, or a reason a name was chosen.

Many names in the series are based on puns. As such, while the ideal would be for every name to have an official explanation as to its origin, most names' meanings are implied to be obvious enough not to be worth confirming explicitly. In fact, very few names are officially explained. This inevitably introduces subjectivity and speculation to these sections, because even a pun as obvious as "Redd White, CEO of Bluecorp" is not technically confirmed to be a pun on colors. Additionally, name sections tend not to be heavily policed, so there may be double standards as to what is deemed worthy to include. Ultimately, speculative information on name origins should be kept to a minimum, focusing on explaining etymologies and "obvious" puns. As mentioned in the above section on speculation, the Texas sharpshooter fallacy should be kept in mind here.

Images[]

Please see the Help:Images page for information.

Links[]

It isn't necessary to link an article more than once per paragraph.

Helpful templates[]

Template:Cleanup

  • Flags a page as needing some sort of improvement. See the template for usage details.

See also[]

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