|
This Manual of Style is intended to standardize the naming formats used in the articles for state highways in the United States. This guideline excludes U.S. Highways and Interstate Highways.
This guide is also supplemented by individual state highway WikiProjects (please see WP:USRD for a list).
Article titles and mainspace naming
Each state has two formats - official name and article title - which can be equivalent. The official name is the format typically used by the state department of transportation (DOT) or the general public, while the article title is a disambiguated form if necessary.
The official name is to be used when writing about the road in an article; only use the article title in another article if the sentence would otherwise be ambiguous. Never use a colloquial title other than those listed above, unless you are mentioning that it exists in the article.
Official nicknames for highways (i.e. Golden State Freeway, Tri-State Tollway, New Jersey Turnpike) may be used if the DOT uses it. However, colloquial names such as The Loneliest Road should not be used.
Footnotes
- ^ Named highways are at <name of road> Highway.
Creation of redirects
Redirects from the official name (as indicated in the above linked lists) to the article should be created at the same time a new state highway article is created. Redirects from the official name are of the form <Official name> <route number>. Often, the official name is ambiguous and will need to be disambiguated. Following standard Wikipedia disambiguation rules, the convention for disambiguation of an ambiguous official name is to follow the above format with the state name in parentheses, e.g. <Official name> <route number> (State name).
Lists to help you make these redirects are at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Redirects.
Bolded text
When writing an article about a state highway, use the official name as indicated in the table above.
Linking
- See also: Help:Pipe trick
When linking to a state highway article, be sure to use the official name, especially for the cases where the official name and article title are different. For these cases, use the redirect from the official name when creating links if the context is already established.
You can use the pipe trick to aid in forming a link. For instance, to link to the article with the title Florida State Road 50, type [[State Road 50 (Florida)|]] to get State Road 50. As long as the redirect from State Road 50 (Florida) to Florida State Road 50 exists, the link will be equivalent to typing [[Florida State Road 50|State Road 50]]. There is nothing wrong with linking to a redirect; do not "fix" these "pipe-tricked" links. This will ensure that articles are standardized but also not redundant.
Direct links using the article title can be used for situations where the context is not clear or for describing highways ending at state lines. For instance, one may be writing an article about roads through swampland in the United States and want to talk about SR 50 in Florida. In that case, you can write "The Cheney Highway, part of Florida State Road 50, crosses the St. Johns River swamp." Or you can word it differently: "The Cheney Highway, part of State Road 50, crosses the St. Johns River swamp in Florida."
Infobox and junction tables
The infobox should use the official name of the road, which is not necessarily the same as the article title. For the junction list, or for a ELG or junction list table, use a short form of the official name or an officially used abbreviation as the displayed text.
No mass moving of pages
Any edit(s) that is/are construed by an administrator as an attempt to change the naming convention of the highways of a state without consensus, such as mass-moving articles, is to be reverted, and the user is to be warned. Users that are obviously aware of this provision already (such as participants in this poll or the ArbCom case, or users that were previously warned) are to be blocked by an administrator.
| 
