These guidelines are under development. Discuss it and improve it.

When writing and editing articles that include the Chinese language, please follow the conventions below. Note

• see Wikipedia:Manual of Style for general cases
• see Wikipedia:History for notes on the style of history articles
• see Wikipedia:History standards for China-related articles for notes on the style of history of China-related articles
• see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) for naming convention of the title of an article, various Chinese names, etc.
• see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) for naming convention of the title of an article related to Tibet, spelling of Tibetan names, etc.
• see Wikipedia:China-related topics notice board for ongoing news and tasks relevant to China-related topics.

Insertion of Chinese characters

This edition of Wikipedia is in English, so do not use characters or romanized forms excessively, such as for common words, making this a kind of English–Chinese bilingual edition. However, if the term does not have an established translation (that is, has multiple translations or none), feel free to provide the Chinese characters, which will be useful to the content of the article. Proper nouns' Chinese characters should also be supplied, unless it is Wikified and the target article in the English Wikipedia contains the characters. Note that cross links to Chinese Wikipedia will not help researchers who need more information in English.

It is usually helpful to add Chinese text to disambiguate Chinese terms that have been transliterated into English. Chinese words are often spelled inconsistently. The addition of native text especially for the article title term is valuable to researchers who need to consult other Chinese scholars on the same subject.

If there is a term you have trouble translating, please bring it up in the Talk page, then, if you wish, drop a short note at Talk:List of China-related topics for other Wikipedians' attention.

Also, to help establish a simple and clean appearance, if a term is Wikified and has an article, do not provide characters or romanization again. For example, the following is redundant.

Li Shimin (李世民), along with King...

It could easily be rendered as:

Li Shimin, along with King...

which simplifies the article. If the reader wishes to find out about the native text, he or she can simply click on the link (where the writer should direct the Chinese characters if not already present).

If, however, there is no article, then it is essential to insert traditional or simplified Chinese characters and full Hanyu Pinyin with tone-marks, as a minimum. Those characters can later be removed once a stub/article has been created. Non-English insertions should minimize interruption to the flow of reading. They should always be put within parentheses, as if they were call-outs not part of the sentence. Try reading the sentence aloud by skipping everything within the parentheses. If an English reader can read the sentence in a grammatically correct way without any unpronouncible interruption, then the sentence is in acceptable form. For example:

"His name was Li Shimin (李世民)."

is okay but

"His name was 李世民."

is not a readable English sentence. Chinese insertions to list and table entries can be done without parentheses because these items are seldom read like sentences.

All encyclopedia entries whose title includes a Chinese name or term should include the relevant Chinese characters and hanyu pinyin representation.

There are two preferred alternative ways to introduce this information: within the introductory sentence, or in a box to the right in the introduction. Contributors to the individual article concerned should decide together the most appropriate alternative for that particular page.

This page contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Many browsers are not set up to correctly render Chinese text. If an article contains several instances of Chinese text, such as this page, consider using the template contains Chinese text, shown adjacent to this paragraph. This will alert users to the missing or inaccurate information. You can do this by inserting the code {{contains Chinese text}} near the top of the article (the capitalization is significant).

Introductory sentence

• Topic (characters; pinyin: pinyin, Wade-Giles: Wade Giles; also other-romanization, other-romanization...) ... for example, Zeng Guofan (曾國藩; pinyin: Zēng Guófán; Wade-Giles: Tseng Kuo-fan)...

If the topic itself is romanized according to a particular system (and, in the case of pinyin, has tone marks present in the first sentence's bold highlight), then you should avoid re-listing the romanized form in the brackets following it. However, in the case of pinyin, it is acceptable to first list the title without tones, and to re-list the title with tones indicated.

• Tǒpīc (characters) OK
• Topic (characters; pinyin tǒpīc) OK
• Tǒpīc (characters; pinyin tǒpīc) Discouraged (note the repetition of Tǒpīc)

If the topic is one in which simplified and traditional characters vary, then you should add the other version. Order is potentially politically charged, and there is no solution to this problem. Either order is acceptable. The simplified version should be presented first for modern mainland China/Singapore subjects and the opposite should be done for modern Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau subjects. A suggested format is as follows:

• Topic (Traditional Chinese: characters; Simplified Chinese: characters; pinyin: pīnyīn; Wade-Giles: W'ade Gil'es; also other-romanization, other-romanization...) ...

Templates

Most China-related articles currently show great inconsistency in how romanization information is presented. To help promote better consistency, the {{zh}} template is offered, to closely reflect the styles recommended above. Usage instructions and examples are available at Template:zh. You can also use its sister template, {{zh-full}}, which has more complicated syntax but gives the user greater flexibility in choosing the order in which elements are displayed.

Examples

Template Example Result
{{zh}} {{zh |s=周恩来 |t=周恩來 |p=Zhōu Ēnlái}} simplified Chinese: 周恩来; traditional Chinese: 周恩來; pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái
{{zh}} {{zh |t=馬英九 |s=马英九 |p=Mǎ Yīngjiǔ |first=t}} traditional Chinese: 馬英九; simplified Chinese: 马英九; pinyin: Mǎ Yīngjiǔ

Note that the parameters can be specified in any order.

{{zh |t=東 |s=东}} and
{{zh |s=东 |t=東}} produce the exact same result.

To make traditional characters display before simplified, and Tongyong Pinyin and/or Jyutping display before Hanyu pinyin, you can add the parameter |first=t anywhere in the template.

To suppress links from appearing (for example, if you have many {{zh}} templates in the same article or paragraph), add the |links=no parameter anywhere in the template.`

Box format

Names (details)
Known in English as: Sun Yat-sen
Chinese: 孫逸仙
Hanyu Pinyin: Sūn Yìxiān
Wade-Giles: Sun I-hsien
Known to Chinese as: 孫中山
Hanyu Pinyin: Sūn Zhōngshān
Wade-Giles: Sun Chung-shan
Family name: Sun
Traditional Chinese: 孫
Simplified Chinese: 孙
Given names
Register name : Deming (德明)
Milk name : Dixiang (帝象)
School name : Wen (文)
Courtesy name : Zaizhi (載之)
Pseudonym : Rixin (日新), later
Yixian (逸仙),
pronounced similarly
in Cantonese (Yat
San, Yat Sin, resp.)
Alias : Zhongshan (中山)
Styled: Guofu (國父), i.e.
"Father of the Nation"

Using a box removes the characters and romanization from the opening sentence, thus making it more readable, while retaining the information off to the side so that the reader can still see it—look right for an example. It is up to the contributors to each individual article to determine together what information should or should not be included in such a box, or whether they want a box at all. This a standardised template that can be used to format this information: