CTD/Rules
Editorial guidelines
General guidelines
The Comprehensive Theosophical Dictionary is part of Teopedia. Its purpose is to provide concise information about a term, phenomenon, person or work, with links for further study.
Teopedia offers four levels of information:
- Concise dictionary entries summarise the subject.
- Collections of quotations provide more detailed material on a subject or theme.
- Articles and books in the online library preserve the complete texts, making it possible to recover the context of a quotation or a concise statement in the dictionary.
- Files in the repositories provide texts, images, audio and video in various formats, supplementing the online library.
Theosophy Wiki provides more extensive reference articles and is a useful related resource.
When creating or editing a dictionary entry:
- Keep it concise. Summarise the subject instead of copying an article from Wikipedia or another dictionary. Articles from H. P. Blavatsky's The Theosophical Glossary are an exception and may be reproduced in full. For a person, explain the significance of their work. Link to useful sources for further reading.
- Identify the sources. Use {{ctd-source}} after the information it supports. See Sources and {{CTD sources}} for examples. A source signature must support the preceding statement.
- Keep quotation collections separate. Place extended quotations on the corresponding Quotes: page and link to them from the entry. Preserve the wording of quotations.
Entries about people
Use «CTD article» and mark the Person checkbox.
- Term or name in sortable form: surname first, followed by the given names and other parts of the name; for example, Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna or Molinos, Miguel de. Names without a surname retain their usual order, for example Koot Hoomi.
- Surname and Initials: these fields generate the short name. In English, include spaces between initials, for example H. P.. Do not repeat the automatically generated short name in the variations field.
- Regular form: the name in its usual order, for example Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.
Entries about literary works
Use «CTD literature» and {{CTD literature}}. Use «CTD periodical» for periodicals.
- For a work with a known author, name the page Surname I. I. - Work title. Use only established names and initials.
- If the author is unknown, use Work title and add Literature with unidentified authors to the categories field.
- Widely known works without an individual author, such as the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, do not need an author prefix. Do not include the editor of a collection in the page name; for example, use Five Years of Theosophy.
- Use Latin letters, digits, spaces and .,-() in the page name. Omit other punctuation or replace it with permitted characters. Preserve the full title and its original punctuation in the title field, without enclosing the whole title in extra quotation marks.
- The general entry describes the work and links to its editions and translations. Record bibliographic details and links in the publications and translations fields.
- Separate list items with semicolons. Choose a unique short title for references and check the list of existing short titles.
- Check for an existing entry before creating another page. Preserve existing information and sources when adding new material.
Other entries
Where a term has independent alternative spellings, redirects can help readers find the main entry. Check existing pages before creating a redirect.