Wikipedia:WikiProject NATO/Conventions

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The following guidelines apply to articles under the purview of the WikiProject NATO.

For general conventions, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

People

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people).

Usually, a biographical article should be named in the way the names of the person who is the article's subject usually appears in English-language publications.

Places

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names).

Macedonia naming

In its list of partner countries, NATO formally identifies the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, similar to United Nations identification.

However, when referring to the modern nation of Macedonia in NATO-related articles, the guidelines at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia) will apply. These naming conventions were established through a binding Arbitration Committee process and are considered enforceable policy. Roughly speaking, use of the "Former Yugoslav Republic" or similar qualifiers is discouraged, with very limited exceptions e.g. to report on NATO's naming convention itself. Macedonia or Republic of Macedonia should be used depending on the criteria described in the naming convention.

Currency

Use the national currency as indicated by the reference. Representations in Euro or United States dollar currencies may be made if supported by sources.

See also WP:$.

Dates

Dates are indicated with the day before the month (International format), that is, "9 August" and "9 August 1965". This is in keeping with normal NATO practice, and is even the preferred format for American military subjects in Wikipedia.

Therefore:

• dates should be set out with the day before the month;
• the parameter "df=yes" ("df" standing for "day first") should be used with the templates {{Birth date and age}}, {{Birth year and age}}, {{Death date and age}}, {{Death year and age}}, and related templates; and
• the {{dmy}} tag can be used within articles to help inform bots and human editors of the date format in effect.

English variety

No particular variant of English is mandated. The general style guide (Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English) applies to project articles.

NATO operations historically tended to use European English (or generally British English-based) spelling and grammar,^[1] but current practice has become less consistent as to the national variety of English used e.g. spelling of Organisation (UK) versus Organization (US) in the NATO name.

For new articles, if editors are uncertain as to the style of English to apply, the use of {{British English}} is suggested as a tiebreaker variant.

Measurements

Measurements should be set out using the metric system. Measurements in the Imperial system may be provided in parentheses after the metric measurement as can be done conveniently using the {{Convert}} template.

The following references may be useful in providing background and information on NATO topics:

• NATO Standard AAP-6 (STANAG 3680) - "NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions (English and French)"
• NATO Standard AAP-42 (STANAG 7186) - "NATO Glossary of Standardization Terms and Definitions (English and French)"