This page is intended to give guidance on formatting and style issues not covered by Wiktionary:Entry layout explained. WT:ELE is an official policy that can only be changed by a vote, and cannot be overruled by this page.
English definitions, in terms of their presentation, are to be treated as sentences, even when the definition is only one word. This means each definition should start with a capital letter and end with a period (aka full stop). For words that do not start with a capital letter, use a piped link, such as
# ].
or
# {{l|en|word|Word}}.
The first example links to the page word, while the second one links to word#English
Definitions for language other than English are not treated as sentences, and should have neither a capital letter nor a period. Of course, for words that require a capital letter, this capital letter is maintained
# ]
#(not ])
However definitions may be treated as sentences for multi-sentence definitions.
Translations should always be inside the templates {{trans-top}} {{trans-mid}} and {{trans-bottom}}. Translation glosses, the first unnamed parameter in trans-top should not have wikilinks, an initial capital letter or a period. This is because translation glosses are not intended to duplicate the definitions, but to make it clear which definition the translation table is referring to. Shortening glosses is ok as long as it is unambiguous which definition the table refers to. Remember definitions are added, removed and reworded, and translation tables should be updated to reflect this.
Please do not use templates inside {{trans-top}}, instead of {{context}} or {{qualifier}}, use ''(example context)''.
Descendants are to use a similar format to translations. In particular they should be alphabetized and not contain wikilinks to the language names. There is no clear consensus on where to put languages whose names start with 'old' or 'middle' such as Old French and Middle French. Some alphabetize them, some alphabetize them as 'French'. Descendants should not use {{t}} or any other translation-linking template, but rather use {{l}}. A square bracket links is acceptable such as ] or ], but these should be updated to {{l}} (or in the case of English, {{l/en}} is equally acceptable).
When linking to other projects, the project prefix should not be visible. For example, in English, the link should be English language and not w:English language with a visible w:. The same applies to language prefixes; Lingua inglese and not w:it:Lingua inglese.