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This guideline deals with the content and naming ofIndia-related articles. Please note:
The purpose of this manual is to create style guidelines for editing articles related to the country ofIndia in the English Wikipedia to conform to a neutral encyclopedic standard, as well as to make things easier to read by following a consistent format. This manual also states the conventions to be followed for writing the names inIndic scripts. The following rules do not claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone follows minimum standards, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. This manual is open to all proposals, discussion, and editing.
This convention should be applied to any language spoken in the Indian subcontinent that is written in anIndic script. The major languages are:Assamese,Bengali,Gujarati,Hindi,Kannada,Konkani (when written in Kannada or Devanagari scripts),Malayalam,Marathi,Manipuri (when written inMeitei script orEastern Nagari scripts)Nepali,Odia,Pali,Punjabi (when written in Gurmukhi script),Sanskrit,Sinhala,Tamil, andTelugu.
The following languages are of Indic origin, but will usually be written in non-Indic scripts, usually derived fromArabic (seeWikipedia:Naming conventions (Arabic)):Urdu,Kashmiri,Punjabi (western), andSindhi. This convention will normally apply to them only when transliterating from writings in an Indic script.
Several languages may be written in Indic scripts, but are not themselves Indic languages. Some aspects of this convention may apply to them, but they may have their own conventions. They includeTibetan,Burmese,Thai,Khmer,Lao, andJavanese.
This standard is recommended for use in articles in the following fields;
While the article title should generally be the name by which the subject is most commonly known, the subject's full name should be given in the lead paragraph, if known. It is common to give the maiden surname of women better known under their married name. For people who are best known by apseudonym, the legal name should usually appear first in the article, followed closely by the pseudonym. Follow this practice even if the article itself is titled with the pseudonym. Alternatively, the legal name can appear in apposition to the pseudonym.
Generally, titles and honorifics should not be used either in the article body or when naming an article. Academic and professional titles (such as "Doctor" or "Professor") should not be used before the name in the initial sentence or in other uses of the person's name; attainment of these titles should be included in the article text instead.
After the initial mention of any name, the person may be referred to by surname only. The person may be referred to by their first name in the case ofroyalty, or as "Prince/ss/Yuvraj/Yuvrani First Name" or as "The Maharaja", "The Maharani", etc. Biographies of living persons should begin in the present tense; biographies of deceased persons should begin in the past tense. If a person is living but has retired, use the present tense "is a former" rather than the past tense "was".Redirects should be used for other forms of an individual's name.
Use the{{lang}} tag to mark non-English strings. When giving a term in its native script, provide theISO 639-2 code (if unavailable, use theISO 639-3 code) to identify the language. Example:
{{lang|ta|தமிழ்}},{{lang|hi|हिन्दी}} →தமிழ்,हिन्दीUseISO 15919 transliteration for all non-Sanskrit terms. To write a term using its ISO 15919 transliteration, use the{{transliteration}} tag with the language code andISO as the transliteration standard:
{{Transliteration|ta|ISO|tamiḻ}},{{Transliteration|hi|ISO|hindī}}For Sanskrit terms, use{{IAST}} instead of{{transliteration}}:
{{IAST|saṃskṛtam}}Avoid the use ofIndic scripts inlead sections orinfoboxes. Instead, useInternational Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation guides, which are more international. Exceptions are articles on the script itself, articles on a language that uses the script, and articles on texts originally written in a particular script.
This avoidance of Indic scripts only applies to articles that are predominantly India-related and is excluded from, among others, articles about Hinduism, Buddhism, or any of India's neighbouring countries. It is a divergence from the usual practice of including non-Latin script in leads when it is arguably relevant (e.g. "Athens ...Greek:Αθήνα ..." at the articleAthens).
One reason Indian scripts are avoided is that there often are too many languages with their own native script, each of which can be original names for a topic. Additionally, there are too often problems with verifiability of the accuracy of the non-English spelling. A third reason is frequent disagreements over which native scripts to include; this led to a resolution to avoid all of them.
This consensus is the result of a2012 request for comment on Indic scripts generally, and a2017 request for comment on Indic script in infoboxes. Those large community discussions followed many other discussions including these:
Use theWikidata item of the article to link to the equivalent article on the other Indian language Wikipedias. The Wikidata item can be found on left side bar.
Additionally, there is generally no need to use inline links to the equivalent other Indian Language Wikipedias article for any words in an article. If a word is important enough to warrant a link, it will have an article here, in which case a standard link is sufficient. However,interwiki linking may be used to supplementred links. SeeHelp:Interlanguage links § Inline links for more information on how to do this. Linking of the name of Indian people in their mother tongue Wikipedia can be done.
If both the English and Indic pronunciation are the same (likely if the Indic word is not used in English) then ignore theindicipa parameter. If you don't have audio files, you can simply leave those parameters out. For full details of what the template can do, seeTemplate:Indic.
Personal, organisation, and company names in current and recent usage should generally be romanized according to the nameholder's preference, if that can be established. However, this convention may be appropriately applied to them in certain contexts. These include:
