Addition and formatting guidelines
This quote page is organized a little differently from others, largely because it can be divided into seasons and episodes and because many great quotes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are in the form of dialog, which confounds the usual quote formatting.
To add a quote, find the episode it occurs in and copy the formatting of an existing quote to your own needs. If you don't know what episode your quote appeared in, place it in the Unknown episode section, and I or someone else will move it as time permits.
The basic formatting guidelines (as I start this page) are as follows, using this example:
- :'''[[w:Xander Harris|Xander]]''': Angel was in your bedroom?!
- :'''[[w:Willow Rosenberg|Willow]]''': Ours is a forbidden love.
They work as follows:
- The colon (:) indents the quote.
- The triple apostrophes (''') surrounding the character name make the name bold.
- The double brackets ([[,]]) make the character name a Wiki link, so you can click on the character for more information.
- The expression "w:Character's FullName|" makes it a link to Wikipedia, where most if not all of the Buffy characters have entries.
- Don't put any blank lines between lines within a single dialog quote, but make sure there's a blank line between separate quotes.
In long dialog sections, you should only put Wiki links around the first occurrence of each character (to save time and headaches). If all this formatting is too much for your to bother with, just use a simplified version:
- :Xander: Angel was in your bedroom?!
- :Willow: Ours is a forbidden love.
Just try to remember the initial colon (:) and the blank line between different quotes. Sooner or later, someone will likely come along and pretty it up. -- Jeff Q 03:09, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- NOTE: I removed the add-an-episode instructions from 23 April 2004 that were here, as they became moot when we switched to a complete table of contents and a complete set of episode sections. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:58, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I'm in the process of formalizing a practice that others have already been doing — including the complete character link for the first character occurrence per episode, not per quote, as I suggested earlier. This seems like a reasonable alternative, and takes pressure off contributors to insert all that Wiki markup. For the record, the simplified formatting for a character (i.e., just indented and bolded) looks like this:
- :'''BuffyBot''': That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo!
- which displays as:
- BuffyBot: That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo!
- — Jeff Q 01:46, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Character list
Here is a set of preformatted character names that, if you paste it into your quotes, will provide full formatting and linking abilities, including disambiguation for common names. They're separated into regular and recurring characters, and sorted by the names they're typically called in the show.
- REGULAR CHARACTERS
- :'''[[w:Angel (television)|Angel]]'''
- :'''[[w:Anya Jenkins|Anya]]'''
- :'''[[w:Buffy Summers|Buffy]]'''
- :'''[[w:Cordelia Chase|Cordelia]]'''
- :'''[[w:Dawn Summers|Dawn]]'''
- :'''[[w:Rupert Giles|Giles]]'''
- :'''[[w:Daniel 'Oz' Osborne|Oz]]'''
- :'''[[w:Riley Finn|Riley]]'''
- :'''[[w:Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Spike]]'''
- :'''[[w:Tara Maclay|Tara]]'''
- :'''[[w:Willow Rosenberg|Willow]]'''
- :'''[[w:Xander Harris|Xander]]'''
- RECURRING CHARACTERS
- :'''[[w:Adam (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Adam]]'''
- :'''[[w:Amy Madison|Amy]]'''
- :'''[[w:Andrew Wells|Andrew]]'''
- :'''[[w:Ben (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Ben]]'''
- :'''[[w:Buffybot|Buffybot]]'''
- :'''[[w:Caleb (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Caleb]]'''
- :'''[[w:Clem|Clem]]'''
- :'''[[w:Darla|Darla]]'''
- :'''[[w:Devon MacLeish|Devon]]'''
- :'''[[w:D'Hoffryn|D'Hoffryn]]'''
- :'''[[w:Drusilla|Drusilla]]'''
- :'''[[w:Ethan Rayne|Ethan]]'''
- :'''[[w:Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Faith]]'''
- :'''[[w:The First Evil|The First]]'''
- :'''[[w:Glory (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Glory]]'''
- :'''[[w:Halfrek|Halfrek]]'''
- :'''[[w:Harmony Kendall|Harmony]]'''
- :'''[[w:Jenny Calendar|Jenny]]'''
- :'''[[w:Jenny Calendar|Ms. Calendar]]'''
- :'''[[w:Jonathan Levinson|Jonathan]]'''
- :'''[[w:Joyce Summers|Joyce]]'''
- :'''[[w:Kendra|Kendra]]'''
- :'''[[w:Kennedy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Kennedy]]'''
- :'''[[w:Larry Blaisdell|Larry]]'''
- :'''[[w:Maggie Walsh|Maggie Walsh]]'''
- :'''[[w:The Master (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|The Master]]'''
- :'''[[w:Richard Wilkins|The Mayor]]'''
- :'''[[w:Mr. Trick (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Mr. Trick]]'''
- :'''[[w:Principal Flutie (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Principal Flutie]]'''
- :'''[[w:Principal Snyder|Principal Snyder]]'''
- :'''[[w:Principal Robin Wood|Principal Wood]]'''
- :'''[[w:Quentin Travers|Quentin Travers]]'''
- :'''[[w:Warren Mears|Warren]]'''
- :'''[[w:Wesley Wyndam-Pryce|Wesley]]'''
- :'''[[w:Willy the Snitch|Willy]]'''
A few of the characters may not yet have Wikipedia pages. If you feel adventurous, you might consider adding one yourself. — Jeff Q 04:56, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I see folks have been busy over at Wikipedia:Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Just about every regular and recurring character now has their own Wikipedia article. I've added a few recurring characters above that already appear in this article, but people should feel free to add others to help ensure correct Wikipedia article linking. — Jeff Q 03:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Comments and contexts for quotes
If a particular quote needs some context or a comment to make it clear, italicize it and put braces around it, like so:
- [Willow, sleeping over an open book, bolts upright.]
- Willow : Don't warn the tadpoles!
The formatting line for the comment line above is:
- :''[Willow, sleeping over an open book, bolts upright.]''
Although comments should be succinct, longer dialog sections may need longer explanations. -- Jeff Q 04:06, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Separating dialog segments
There is an unresolved problem in visually separating different dialog segments. Using the Standard (now called Classic) skin and its stylesheet, separating segments with a single blank line makes it clear that consecutive segments are separate. However, with the new Monobook skin forced on anonymous users and anyone who hasn't explictly chosen otherwise, it is difficult to see where one segment ends and the next begins. This problem does not look like it'll be resolved anytime soon.
Several approaches have been tried in this and other articles to remedy this situation, but most only fix the problem for one skin or the other. In order to make the article clearer without adding too much blank space for one skin, I have inserted the following HTML between each pair of dialog sections:
- <hr width=50%/>
I didn't use the standard Wiki line markup "----" because it looks exactly like the horizontal lines used in Monobook headings. It would be preferable to use Wiki markup, or to have spacing between the skins match, but based on my unanswered pleas on several discussion pages, I don't see this happening. Let's try this out for a while. I invite comments and questions. -- Jeff Q 02:08, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
More compact table of contents
Currently, we have quotes from only 29 of the 156 official Buffy episodes, yet the table of contents is already a page and a half long (give or take a little, depending on which skin [page style] you're using). I've been trying to come up with a useful custom table of contents that would make it easy to jump to any particular episode without scrolling down just to find the episode name in the TOC. I've created an experimental Buffy TOC page with one idea that I'd like people to look at and comment on, using its Talk page. My major concerns are:
- Compact size to minimize scrolling and wasted space before actual quote entries.
- Making the table complete so no one adding quotes has to do anything to the table of contents.
I've also added a little color to its season headers to echo the increasing darkness of the series.
I don't plan to add it to this quote page unless I get a feeling that it would be positively received, so let me know what you think, either way. I'd also appreciate any suggestions. -- Jeff Q 07:58, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Well, folks, I've had zero feedback on this issue, positive or negative. Therefore, I plan to implement the current version of this compact TOC later today. I hope that this will get people to give me some feedback. If it's more negative than positive, I'll just switch it back (being sure not to lose any quote changes made in the interim). — Jeff Q 06:32, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Funny reference to www.homestarrunner.com
Andrew: You go through the door and are confronted by Trogdor the Burninator.
Note: That was copied off www.homestarrunner.com, homestarrunner didn't copy it off buffy. 203.41.14.140 03:38, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- I don't understand your point. Are you saying that this is not an actual quote from Buffy? I have it from a fairly reliable source that this is an exact quote from "Chosen" (the final episode), during the pre-apocalyptic D&D game. I haven't personally verified it from my own partial transcriptions, as I didn't find this particular quote interesting, but if there is some question of its legitimacy, I'll look into it. Let me know if that's what you mean. — Jeff Q 05:55, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
