The Mysterious Spanish Ladies' Officially Unofficial Manual of Etiquette and Style

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The Mysterious Spanish Ladies' Officially Unofficial Manual of Etiquette and Style (or simply Manual of Style) is the style manual for all pages on Meet The Residents Wiki, composed by the wiki's administrators, The Mysterious Spanish Ladies.

If any contradiction or confusion regarding style, presentation or etiquette should arise in the editing of pages on this wiki, the styles detailed in this guide should take precedence, alongside the wiki's user rules and the Fandom terms of use, which all contributors to the wiki must implicitly and explicitly agree to when registering as Fandom users.

Sometimes the Manual of Style may provide more than one acceptable style or offer no specific guidance. Where more than one style or format is acceptable, one should be used consistently within a page. If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular page, this should be discussed either on the talk page of the relevant article, or in The Ladies' Discord server, Mysterious Spanish, Uninc..

The Manual of Style is currently under development by The Mysterious Spanish Ladies, and at present is heavily derived from the Wikipedia Manual of Style, with a number of notable differences reflecting Meet The Residents Wiki's stylistic and philosophical differences from that more popular online encyclopedia.

Any new content added to this page should directly address and resolve a persistently recurring style issue. For suggestions and additions to this page, contact a Mysterious Spanish Lady to discuss.

A Mysterious Antipodean Lady Attempts to Explain the Wiki's Use of American English

National varieties of English

National varieties of English (ie. American or British English) differ in vocabulary (elevator vs. lift), spelling (center vs. centre), and occasionally grammar. Wikipedia articles such as "English plurals" and "Comparison of American and British English" provide further detail about these differences. A page's date formatting (November 3rd 2022 vs. 3rd November 2022) is also related to national varieties of English.

Meet The Residents Wiki has consistently been written in American English, with the American style of date formatting (ie. November 3rd 2022), as this the style in which virtually all of The Residents and The Cryptic Corporation's material is written - despite both of the wiki's primary administrators residing in countries which predominantly use British English.

As such, pages on the wiki should generally maintain American English style, for the sake of consistency with The Residents' song and release titles, and with the resource material the wiki relies heavily upon. Pages should be written using straightforward and succinct language, with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting.

Consistency within pages

Within a given article the conventions of one particular variety of English should be followed consistently. Exceptions include:

Quotations, titles of works (books, films, etc.) should be as given in the source
Proper names use the subject's own spelling

Retaining the existing variety

American English should be consistently maintained when writing or editing Meet The Residents Wiki in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (ie. quotations), there is no valid reason for changing from one English variety to another within any single article.

When the proper English variety for a page is in dispute and discussion does not resolve the issue, American English should always be the default preference. Discussion regarding this issue is best directed to the talk page of the relevant article.

Use of capital letters

Capitalization of "the"

Generally, you do not capitalize the word "the" in mid-sentence: ie. "throughout the United Kingdom", not "throughout The United Kingdom". Conventional exceptions include certain proper names and most titles of creative works.

There are sometimes special considerations for band names, institution names, nicknames, titles of works, trademarks, and other organizations (ie. it is proper to refer to The Mysterious Spanish Ladies with a capitalized "The", including when referring to them simply as The Ladies).

Capitalization of "The" in "The Residents"

Although this is not commonly reflected in official media or in the wider music press, throughout the composition of Meet The Residents Wiki, The Mysterious Spanish Ladies have usually chosen to present The Residents' name with a capitalized "The"; one Lady is known to have said (with tongue somewhat in cheek) that this informal rule is observed in order to pay the group the respect usually afforded to historical deities.

One notable exception to this rule is where an individual member of the group is referred to as "the Resident", ie. "the Resident responsible for this..." Most other instances where "the Residents" are referred to without a capitalized "The" will likely be edited by the Mysterious Spanish Lady responsible for this policy.

The Ladies have also been known to capitalize the definitive article in "The Beatles"; whether this denotes a personal appreciation for that band among The Ladies' members, or is an inside joke reflecting the debunked rumors that The Residents were in fact The Beatles incognito, is known only to the members of The Ladies. The Ladies will also capitalize the definitive article in their own name (as previously mentioned); this is presumably a reflection of their formidable egotism.

Titles of works

The English language titles of compositions (such as books and other print works, songs and other audio works, films and other visual media works, paintings and other artworks, etc.) are given in title case, in which every word is given an initial capital except for certain less important words (such as "of", "and", and "the"). The first and last words in an English language title are always capitalized.

Correct: The Voice of Midnight

Per the above, The Mysterious Spanish Ladies have chosen to present the title of The Residents' third studio album The Third Reich 'n Roll with a lower case "'n" to reflect its status as a contraction of the otherwise lowercase "and", although the capital "'N" and even the double-apostrophe variation "'N'" have also been used within official sources.

Correct: The Third Reich 'n Roll

The Ladies present the titles of releases as they appear on the original cover (where possible); for this reason, they will often refer to The Residents' 1980 release Commercial Album without the definitive article, which is absent from the album's cover, although the album has also frequently been referred to with the definitive article within official sources (although The Commercial Album also redirects to the page). The same can be said for the related 2004 DVD release Commercial DVD.

Correct: Commercial Album

Titles of people

In generic use, apply lower case to words such as president, king, and emperor (ie. "John Kennedy was president of The Cryptic Corporation").

Directly juxtaposed with the person's name, such words begin with a capital letter (ie. "President Nixon", not "president Nixon"). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper names (ie. "Homer Flynn is the current "Captain Doc" of The Cryptic Corporation"). Royal styles are capitalized (Her Majesty; His Highness); exceptions may apply for particular offices.

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines

Religions, sects, and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally, "the" is not capitalized before such names (the Unitarians, not The Unitarians).
Religious texts are capitalized, but often not italicized (the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, the Talmud, the Granth Sahib, the Bible). Do not capitalize "the" when using it in this way. Some derived adjectives are capitalized by convention, and some are not (biblical, but Quranic); if unsure, check a dictionary.
Honorifics for deities, including proper names and titles, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit, the Horned One, Bhagavan). Do not capitalize "the" in such cases or when referring to major religious figures or characters from mythology (the Prophet, the Messiah, the Virgin). Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized (many gods; the god Woden; saints and prophets).
Pronouns for figures of veneration or worship are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures (God and his will).
Broad categories of mythical or legendary beings start with lower-case letters (ie. elf, fairy, nymph, unicorn, angel), although in works of fantasy, such as The Residents' Mole Trilogy, initial capitals are sometimes used to indicate that the beings form a culture or race in a fictional universe. Capitalize the names or titles of individual creatures (ie. the Mole/Mohelmot, the Chub) and of groups whose name and membership are fixed (the Moles/Mohelmot, or the Chubs). Generalized references are not capitalized (these priests; several wise men; cherub-like).
Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood and the Exodus; but annual flooding and an exodus of refugees).
Philosophies, theories, movements, and doctrines use lower case unless the name derives from a proper name (capitalism versus Marxism) or has become a proper name (republican, a system of political thought; Republican, a political party). Use lower case for doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas (as opposed to specific events), even if they are capitalized by some religious adherents (virgin birth, original sin, transubstantiation).
Platonic or transcendent ideals are capitalized in the context of philosophical doctrine (Truth, the Good); used more broadly, they are in lower case (Superman represents American ideals of truth and justice). Use capitals for personifications represented in art (the guidebook mentioned statues of Justice and Liberty).
Eponyms are capitalized (Edwardian, De Morgan's laws, Alice in Wonderland syndrome, plaster of Paris, Platonic idealism, Draconian constitution of Athens), except in idiomatic uses disconnected from the original context and usually lower-cased in sources (a platonic relationship; complained of draconian workplace policies). An entire phrase in which an eponym is an adjective is not capitalized except when the phrase is itself a proper name.

Calendar items

Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter (June, Monday; the Fourth of July refers only to the US Independence Day – otherwise July 4 or 4 July).
Seasons are in lower case (her last summer; the winter solstice; spring fever), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events (Old Man Winter; competed on the Spring Circuit).

Animals, plants, and other organisms

When using taxonomic ("scientific") names, capitalize and italicize the genus: Berberis, Erithacus. (Supergenus and subgenus, when applicable, are treated the same way.) Italicize but do not capitalize taxonomic ranks at the level of species and below: Berberis darwinii, Erithacus rubecula superbus, Acacia coriacea subsp. sericophylla; no exception is made for proper names forming part of scientific names. Higher taxa (order, family, etc.) are capitalized in Latin (Carnivora, Felidae) but not in their English equivalents (carnivorans, felids); they are not italicized in either form, except for viruses, where all names accepted by the ICTV are italicized (Retroviridae).

Cultivar and cultivar group names of plants are not italicized, and are capitalized (including the word Group in the name); cultivar names appear within single quotes (Malus domestica 'Red Delicious'), while cultivar groups do not (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group).

English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case in article prose (plains zebra, mountain maple, and southwestern red-tailed hawk) and in sentence case at the start of sentences and in other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized. They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: Przewalski's horse, California condor, and fair-maid-of-France. This applies to species and subspecies, as in the previous examples, as well as to general names for groups or types of organism: bird of prey, oak, great apes, Bryde's whales, livestock guardian dog, poodle, Van cat, wolfdog. When the common name coincides with a scientific taxon, do not capitalize or italicize, except where addressing the organism taxonomically: A lynx is any of the four medium-sized wild cat species within the genus Lynx. Non-English vernacular names, when relevant to include, are handled like any other foreign-language terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it. Non-English names that have become English-assimilated are treated as English (ayahuasca, okapi).

Standardized breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards. Examples: German Shepherd dog, Russian White goat, Berlin Short-faced Tumbler. As with plant cultivars, this applies whether or not the included noun is a proper name, in contrast to how vernacular names of species are written. However, unlike cultivars, breeds are never put in single quotation marks, and their names are never part of a scientific name. A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standard(s) (rare cases include Norwegian Forest Cat and American Quarter Horse).

Celestial bodies

The words sun, earth, moon and solar system do not take capitals in general use (The sun was over the mountain top; The tribal people thought of the whole earth as their home). They are capitalized when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ('Unconquered Sun') was the Roman sun god) or when used as the name of a specific body in a scientific or astronomical context (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).

Names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, constellations, and galaxies are proper names, and therefore capitalized (The planet Mars is in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux). The first letter of every word in such a name is capitalized (Alpha Centauri and not Alpha centauri; Milky Way, not Milky way). Words such as comet and galaxy should be capitalized when they form part of a proper name, but not when they are used as a generic term (Halley's Comet is the most famous of the comets; The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy).

Compass points

Do not capitalize directions such as north, or their related forms (We took the northern road), except where they are parts of proper names (Great North Road, Great Western Drive, South Pole).

Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status, including informal conventional names (Southern California; the Western Desert), and derived terms for people (e.g., a Southerner as someone from the Southern United States). Do not capitalize descriptive names for regions that have not attained the status of proper names, such as southern Poland.

Composite directions may or may not be hyphenated, depending on the variety of English adopted in the article. Southeast Asia and northwest are more common in American English; but South-East Asia and north-west in British English. In cases such as north–south dialogue and east–west orientation, use an en dash; see § En dashes: other uses.

Proper names versus generic terms

Capitalize names of particular institutions (ie. "the history of Louisiana Tech", "he graduated from C. E. Byrd High School") but not generic words for institutions (the high school is near the university). Do not capitalize the at the start of an institution's name, regardless of the institution's preferred style. There are rare exceptions, when a leading The is represented by a T in the organization's acronym: The International Cat Association (TICA).

Treat political or geographic units similarly: The city has a population of 55,000; The two towns merged to become the City of Smithville. Do not mimic the style of local newspapers which refer to their municipality as the City or The City; an exception is the City of London, referred to as the City in a context that already makes the subject clear, as distinct from London and Greater London. When in doubt, use the full name for accessibility reasons; users of text-to-speech systems usually cannot hear a difference between city and City.

The Ladies' Top Tips for Creating and Editing Wiki Pages

General guidelines

The Mysterious Spanish Ladies generally follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style, which much of The Ladies' Officially Unofficial Manual of Etiquette and Style is derived from.

Nevertheless, considering the fact that The Residents are not a group easily examined under the (ostensibly) stringent factual standards required of Wikipedia editors, and that this fact was a driving force in the creation of this wiki, Meet The Residents Wiki's style does differ from that of Wikipedia, in a number of respects both major and minor.

The Residents have a rich mythology littered with obscure facts, inside jokes, half-truths and outright lies; a Mysterious Spanish Lady's aim should not necessarily be to prove or reveal the truth, but to offer the various versions of the truth available, while also avoiding outright inaccuracies where possible, and restricting personal conjecture to talk pages and discussion in The Ladies' Discord server.

It is The Ladies' opinion that this approach should allow the innocent wiki reader to draw their own conclusions as to the truth of any given subject, in accordance with the general philosophy exhibited by The Residents and their management company The Cryptic Corporation.

The Ladies have been known to be forgiving - perhaps to a fault - of typographical, stylistic and even factual errors, understanding that appropriately covering the subject at hand requires a long-term dedication and willingness to edit and correct the wiki's ever-increasing number of pages on an indefinite basis, and that all new information provided to the wiki by its contributors is valuable and useful.

However, The Ladies strongly encourage that users please supply specific references wherever possible when adding new material to the wiki; this allows us to verify previously unknown information where necessary, improves the wiki's reliability, and allows our readers to conduct their own research on matters of interest. Please use discretion and taste when adding information, and refer to the wiki's user rules if any confusion should arise.

Page titles

A page title should be a recognizable name or description of the subject that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another.

The initial letter will be capitalized automatically by the wiki when creating pages; otherwise, sentence case should be followed (ie. List of tribute albums) rather than title case (List Of Tribute Albums), except where title case would be expected (ie. album/DVD/song titles such as The Third Reich 'n Roll or "The Act of Being Polite"), or in special instances (such as pREServed) where the wiki will automatically capitalize the first letter of the page title regardless
Do not use articles (a, an, or the) as the first word of a page title ("List of unfinished projects", not "A list of unfinished projects" or "The list of unfinished projects"), unless it is an inseparable part of a name (The Residents discography) or title of a work (ie. The Voice of Midnight)
The final character of a page title should not be punctuation, unless it is an inseparable part of a name (ie. Buy Or Die!, Leftovers Again?!) or an abbreviation, or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (ie. Metal, Meat & Bone (EP))

Subject to the above, the rest of the Manual of Style applies also to page titles.

Page organization

A page's text content should begin with an introductory lead section, comprised of a concise summary of the article which is not divided into sections. When first appearing (usually at the beginning) of the text in the introductory section, the page's title should appear in bold, as well as any other alternate titles which may exist as redirect pages.

Infoboxes, images, and other such content in the lead section must be right-aligned. Certain standardized templates and wikicode (usually "tophats" or "notices" such as Template:TheyHateIt or Template:UpcomingProject) are to be placed at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, including any infobox or image file. If a page requires more work to meet the wiki's standard, it should be added to the list of using the tophat template {{Stub}}.

The more detailed body of the article is then typically divided into sections. If an article has at least four section headings, a navigable table of contents appears automatically, just after the lead. A table of contents can be forced to appear in the page at any time by adding the code __TOC__; if being used, this code should be placed immediately underneath the introductory lead section.

If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article (see Wikipedia:Summary style), insert the tophat template {{SeeMainArticle|Article name}} immediately underneath the section heading (note that this template will also require some manual source coding to adjust the font color).

Various kinds of material (mostly optional and included where relevant) may appear after the main body of the article, which can include the following (and which should appear in the order presented below):

A detailed overview of the subject of the page, under an appropriate section heading such as "History" (frequently used in homage to the long-running "Historical" section of The Residents' official website) or "Biography"
An overview of the legacy and impact of the page's subject on Residents history and/or popular culture, under an appropriate section heading such as (most commonly) "Legacy", or "Reception", with relevant sub-headings where necessary
Works created by the subject of the page, under an appropriate section heading such as "Bibliography", "Discography", "Filmography", "Videography" as appropriate
Credits or appearances from the subject of the page on official Residents releases, under a section heading such as "Credits on Residents releases" or "List of appearances in Residents projects" as appropriate
Internal links to related wiki pages, such as relevant books, articles, or other publications related to the subject, with section heading "See also" - avoid "Bibliography" as it is easily confused with a subject's written works
External links to official means of purchasing or streaming relevant songs or albums, ie. MVD Audio and Cherry Red Records' official online stores, or streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, under the heading "Buy Or Die!" (capitalized and with internal link in the section heading)
Links to files (such as PDF, audio or video files) held in Meet The Residents' internal resource library or elsewhere online by The Mysterious Spanish Ladies (such as Google Drive), which provide further context or source material on the subject the page
Footnotes or other editors' notes, with a section heading "Notes" (this will require source coding to successfully accomplish, as you will need to create a second, separate set of "references" in order to do this correctly)
Relevant and appropriate websites that have (or have not) been used as sources, followed by a references list (</references>) using the heading "External links and references"

The following final items do not require section headings:

- Internal wiki links organized into navigational boxes (ie. Template:SantaDogNavbox); these should be ordered from most relevant (top) to least relevant (bottom) and should number no more than five
- Categories, which should be the very last material in the page's source code, and which are given an automatic heading at the bottom of the page by the wiki software

Section headings and sub-headings

Section headings should generally follow the guidance for article titles (above), and should be presented in sentence case (ie. List of tribute albums), with title case only used where appropriate (ie. Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen). Exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis for reasons of irony (as can be seen in this very Manual of Style).

For technical reasons, section headings should:

Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place
Not contain images or icons
Not contain <math> markup or hashtags (#)
Not contain citations or footnotes
Not misuse description list markup (";") to create pseudo-headings
Not contain template transclusions

These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications, and are not subject to override by local consensus.

As a matter of consistent style, section headings should:

Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the page, e.g., "Early life", not "Smith's early life" or "His early life"
Not use color or unusual fonts that might cause accessibility problems.

If a section becomes too long, it should be separated by relevant page sub-headings. Sub-headings should generally follow the same style requirements as normal section headings, as outlined above.

The Mysterious Spanish Ladies encourage and welcome the use of links to other, relevant wiki articles within section headings and sub-headings, to improve the wiki's "clickability" (see following section "Hyperlinks" for more information on how The Ladies use hyperlinks within the wiki).

Hyperlinks

The use of internal hyperlinks when creating or editing pages on Meet The Residents Wiki is strongly encouraged by The Mysterious Spanish Ladies.

Internal links must be included vigorously and thoroughly throughout every page on Meet The Residents Wiki to ensure it meets its ideal standard: a thorough, reliable and highly clickable fan-sourced hypertext encyclopedia on North Louisiana's Phenomenal Pop Combo.

To ensure the wiki is appropriately and usefully hyperlinked, each phrase, word or term which can be linked to a relevant page should be hyperlinked once in each section (or sub-section, if applicable) of a page, including the introductory/lead section, at the point of the phrase/word/term's first appearance in that section's text.

Internal links can also be manually embedded in different (but always relevant) items of text; this can aid in subtly or indirectly implying a connection between a phrase and the subject of a different page, and can even be used satirically to a certain extent, although The Mysterious Spanish Ladies sternly suggest (and will enforce where needed) the application of discretion and taste when judging the appropriateness of satirical hyperlinks.

Lists

Bulleted and numbered lists

Avoid using lists where a passage is read more easily as plain paragraphs
Do not leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the wiki software to interpret each item as the beginning of a new list
- Indents (such as this) are permitted if the elements are "child" items.
Use numbers rather than bullets only if:
- you are quoting a numbered list from another medium, such as a newsletter or blog;
- the sequence of the items is critical; or
- the numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of tracks on an album, single or EP.
Use the same grammatical form for all elements in a list, and do not mix sentences and sentence fragments as elements, for example when the elements are:
- complete sentences – each one is formatted with sentence case (its first letter is capitalized) and a final period (full point);
- sentence fragments – the list is typically introduced by an introductory fragment ending with a colon;
- titles of works – they retain the original capitalization of the titles;
- other elements – they are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case.

List pages

Certain Mysterious Spanish Ladies are known to be compulsive list-makers, which is evident from even a cursory glance at Meet The Residents Wiki.

As list pages (such as The Residents discography or List of interactive media) serve a largely navigational function on Meet The Residents Wiki, their format here differs from that of the majority of pages on Meet The Residents Wiki, and they have somewhat unique considerations regarding layout and formatting.

There are two types of list pages used on Meet The Residents Wiki; which of the two is used in creating a list page depends squarely on the particular requirements of the page itself. The basic, and most commonly used, form of list page (an example being The Residents bibliography) should be structured as follows:

A short introductory section detailing the purpose and contents of the page or list, unseparated by section headings. Unlike other types of pages on the wiki, this section should not usually contain an infobox, but should contain an image oriented to the right of the page, between 240 and 260 pixels wide, with an appropriate caption.
The body of the list presented by the page. This should be a bulleted list of hyperlinked titles, with further information in unlinked text to the right of the link, such as the year of a release (which should always be presented in parentheses). The list should also be separated where appropriate into smaller lists with the use of sub-headings, so as not to appear too long and unbroken, and thus difficult for a reader to navigate.
A short bulleted list of relevant internal links (particularly other similar list pages), under the section heading "See also"
Links to external resources either used or not used in the creation of the list, under the section heading "External links and references", with a reference list (code: </references>) underneath
Any relevant navigation box templates featuring information covered by the list, such as Template:StudioAlbumNavbox, should be included directly under the external links but not under a section heading
Relevant categories, not under a section heading (as Fandom wiki software adds this to pages automatically)

A secondary, less common format of list page is appropriate when listing items where some are so minor as to not encourage the creation of their own dedicated page; this form of list page (an example being List of unfinished projects) should be structured as follows:

A short introductory section detailing the purpose and contents of the page or list, unseparated by section headings. Unlike other types of pages on the wiki, this section should not usually contain an infobox, but should contain an image oriented to the right of the page, between 240 and 260 pixels wide, with an appropriate caption.
The body of the list presented by the page; instead of the more commonly used format of list page, this form of list page instead includes each item in the list as its own section on the page, complete with section heading and lengthy body of descriptive text, and (where applicable or helpful) bulleted lists of relevant internal links underneath the body of text.
A short bulleted list of relevant internal links (particularly other similar list pages), under the section heading "See also"
Links to external resources either used or not used in the creation of the list, under the section heading "External links and references", with a reference list (code: </references>) underneath
Any relevant navigation box templates featuring information covered by the list, such as Template:StudioAlbumNavbox, should be included directly under the external links but not under a section heading
Relevant categories, not under a section heading (as Fandom wiki software adds this to pages automatically)

Media files

Other media files which can be uploaded to Meet The Residents Wiki include most image formats (including GIF, JPG and PNG), as well as PDF documents, and many types of video and audio files (though some formats may not work correctly in Fandom's embedded media player). Style recommendations for the descriptions and titles of such files largely follow the recommendations outlined above (as far as applicable).

Fandom wikis can only support files up to 10 megabytes in size; files (particularly audio and video files) larger than this can be uploaded to The Mysterious Spanish Ladies' Google Drive or YouTube channel upon provision. It is important to note that The Mysterious Spanish Ladies do not approve of the distribution of musical or video material by The Residents.

All files, including images, PDF documents, audio and video files, should have a "fair use" attribution included by the uploader, as this is the doctrine in United States law by which The Mysterious Spanish Ladies are able to make such material available to fans. Files should only be uploaded to the wiki if not easily available elsewhere online or for official purchase, and should be expressly uploaded only for the purposes of enriching the wiki's research or expanding the historical resources it provides to fellow fans.

Copyright infringing musical material or video footage, whether released officially or not, should not be distributed via Meet The Residents Wiki, and will most likely be removed upon detection by a Mysterious Spanish Lady. Such material should be linked to via other online sources such as YouTube or streaming music platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music.

The following types of files are welcomed:

Image files including GIF, JPG, PNG formats; PNG preferred where possible)
PDF documents (no Kindle eBooks or any scans/transcripts of books or album liner notes which are currently in print without permission, please)
Audio files including MP3, WAV, FLAC; mid-quality MP3 preferred due to 10 megabyte size limitations (no musical material available elsewhere officially or unofficially without permission, please)
Video files including MP4; mid-to-low quality MP4 preferred due to 10 megabyte size limitations (no video material available elsewhere officially or unofficially without permission, please)

Images

Images within level 2 sections of the body of a page should firstly be placed at the top of the section to which it relates, just underneath the header and before the beginning of the main body of text. Images used in the introductory section in place of an infobox should be placed before the introductory text but after any tophat/notice template.
Image width should ideally be between 220-260px; larger widths are allowed depending on the requirement of the particular image (ie. if the image is much wider than tall, or has a particular detail better viewed at a slightly higher size).
Multiple images within one section should be used with extreme discretion; excessive images may be moved, re-sized or removed by A Mysterious Spanish Lady.
Avoid using images to convey text. Textual information should almost always be entered as text rather than as an image. Images are not searchable, are slower to download, and are unlikely to be read as text on devices for the visually impaired.
Avoid sandwiching text horizontally between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar.
It is sometimes preferable (and even amusing) to place images of people so that "look" toward the text, however please do not attempt to achieve this by reversing the image.
Avoid referring to images as being to the left, the right, above or below, because image placement varies with platform, and is meaningless to people using screen readers; instead, use captions to identify images.
An image's |alt= text takes the image's place for those who are unable to see the image.

Captions

Images and other graphic files should always include descriptive captions, which may be used to give details such as the year, the subject's age, or other circumstances of the file, along with the name of the subject. Captions should be succinct; more information can be included on its description page, or in the main text.

Captions normally start with a capital letter. Most captions are not complete sentences but merely sentence fragments which should not end with a period. However, if any complete sentence occurs in a caption, then every sentence and every sentence fragment in that caption should end with a period.

The text of captions should not be specially formatted, except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text (e.g., italics for the Latin name of a species). Hyperlinks should be included.

Use in "Resources" sections

When linking to files held internally on Meet The Residents Wiki or externally (on sources such as The Mysterious Spanish Ladies' Google Drive) under a "Resources" section heading, it is proper to present the files in a bulleted list, with each entry denoted by a descriptive title enhanced with a direct hyperlink to the file, followed by (in parentheses) the file size and format, for the benefit of users on limited Internet connections (such as pre-paid mobile phone plans).

Audio files should be embedded into the page under a sub-heading, "Listen online", with the file name, format and size listed beneath the embedded audio player, presented as per the above guidelines, in a single bulleted entry. Video files should not be embedded in this section; instead a suitable area should be found in the main body of the page similar to the use of an image file - however, uploader beware: Fandom's video embedder is often buggy and difficult to implement successfully. Incorrectly uploaded or embedded media files will be removed by a Mysterious Spanish Lady if they cannot be corrected.

External links and references