In order for our articles to retain a consistent style, we have this rough Style Guide that we expect authors to follow.

Unless otherwise stated, this site roughly follows the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook.

Voice, Tone, and Ethics

Voice

For personal essays and reviews, first-person is acceptable (like "I played"). For everything else, use third person pronouns or the first person pronoun "we" unless something is strictly your opinion.

Tone

We're pretty flexible on tone when it comes to personal essays and reviews, as we want the reader to relate more to you, the author. For news and guides, "authoritative yet approachable" is what we're aiming for. Breaking news and posts covering controversial/sensitive topics should use neutral and objective language.

Ethics

Authors are not allowed to write articles about topics they have a personal stake in unless their coverage of it is not controversial. For example, we occasionally let players publish articles about projects they are working on. However, we will never let someone write an article about a controversy they themselves are involved in.

When errors are pointed out in an article, the author should submit a corrected version to us.

Citations

Do not include a "References" section at the end of your article. Citations should be in the form of links. For example, if your source is from a Twitter post, you should include a link to the post in the sentence itself. For example:

But after a while, SpaceUK was exposed for hacking all his achievements.

If your source is from something private (such as an interview), you can instead specify where you got your source from. Ideally, mention them by name unless they're choosing to stay anonymous. For example:

When we asked, our anonymous source confirmed that SpaceUK hacked all his achievements.

Acronyms

Avoid acronyms for "Geometry Dash" (like "GD" or "GMD") and acronyms for level names (such as "CC" for "Cybernetic Crescent").

Using acronyms for common statistics like "FPS" is allowed.

Otherwise, please use the full version of the acronym for the first mention of it, followed by the acronym in brackets afterwards.

Article Structure

Quick Tips

• Keep paragraphs shortly, roughly 1-4 sentences long.
• Use the serial comma before the last item in a list. For example: "Make a level, verify it, and upload it" is acceptable, but "ma level, verify it and upload it" is not.
• Use lists when listing items or steps and each list item is not too short
• Don't include spaces between ellipses and em dashes. For example, "despite that...he saw everything—even what he was not supposed to" is acceptable while "despite that... he saw everything — even what he was not supposed to" is not.
• Don't be creative with unicode symbols. For example, please say "10 stars" instead of "10★."

Article Layout

The layout of an article depends on what type it is. But in general, the following format is safe to abide by:

(Give a quick introduction to the topic and use lots of keywords. This should be 2-3 paragraphs)

(If there are lots of article sections, include a table of contents)

# (Article sections, separated using headings)

(Explain what you need to explain, using lots of lists and keywords)

---

(Quick 1-2 paragraph summary)

(Link to related content on Dashword)

For guides and tutorials, use lots of lists. If each step requires lots of instruction, use subheadings (level 2 headings) beneath a main heading (level 1 heading).

Formatting

Headings

Headings should use Title Case. Ampersands (&) are only allowed to be used in the article title, not in any body headings or paragraphs. Also, don't add periods at the end of headings.

Headings may use Sentence case if they are multiple sentences long. In this case, adding periods and other punctuation at the end of the heading is acceptable.

Also, avoid putting questions in headings. For example, use "The Hardest Level in Geometry Dash" instead of "What is the Hardest Level in Geometry Dash?"

Media

If the image you are using requires attribution, you can credit it in a paragraph beneath it. Credit must require:

• An image title, if present. This must be a link to the image.
• An image author. If none present, use the website name. If there is no image title, this must be a link to the image.
• License information, if required. For example, Creative Commons images require you to specify the license the work is under.

Image Title by Author. Licensed under CC BY 3.0.

If there is no image title or displaying license information is not required, you can just credit the author or website. Ideally, this is integrated nicely into an existing paragraph above or below the image, but this is also acceptable:

Image by Author.

Ideally, images are screenshots taken by you, and therefore will not require attribution.

Links

Aside from citations, as discussed above, you should link to other Dashword articles wherever relevant. For example, if you're talking about a level we've written an article on before, you should link to it. For example:

This is a remake of the 2015 version of Slaughterhouse, a former top 1 demon in Geometry Dash that was also verified by Doggie after SpaceUK was exposed for hacking his completion.

Articles that link to related Dashword articles wherever possible will have a much higher likelihood of being accepted!

Quotes and Blockquotes

Any edits you make for quotes (inline or blockquotes) must be denoted using square brackets. For example, if you cut out a part in the middle, you should include "[...]" denoting that.

Quotes should also be attributed using our citation rules. Typically, this is done by attributing the author before the quote (like "Tride said") and linking to the original source there.

Numbers

Numbers zero through nine should be spelt out as words unless they are part of a statistic or used to reference the placement of an extreme demon (like "Top 1").

Statistics should also have a space before the unit. For example, "60 FPS" is acceptable, but "60FPS" is not. The only exception to this is when referring to resolutions or dimensions, in which case "1080p" and "1920x1080" are acceptable.

Colons

When referring to lists or blockquotes before the current paragraph, ending the sentence with a colon is acceptable.

Level and Player names

Most of the time, only the first letter of each word in the name should be capitalized. For example, "Blast Processing" is acceptable, but "Blast processing" is not.

Even if the level has different capitalization in-game (such as "OUROBOROS"), it should still be capitalized like "Ouroboros" in our articles.

The only exceptions to this are for names that have a very clear capitalization style (like "CraZy" or "iSpyWithMyLittleEye").

Some players like to give themselves all lowercase names on social media and in-game. Their names should have the first letter capitalized in these cases unless it matches one of the above exceptions.

Player and level names should also not be Bolded, Italicized, or put in "quotes." Exceptions can be made for particularly confusing titles that are not obvious level or player names.

Lists

List items (ordered and unordered) should only end in a period if they are full sentences or multiple sentences long. The first letter of each list item should also be capitalized unless the first word is a name where the first letter shouldn't be capitalized, such as iSpyWithMyLittleEye.

Bold and Italics

Bold text should only be used when describing UI options or button presses (such as Press A or Shift + Click).

Italics should be used sparingly to emphasize certain words, usually in personal essays or reviews. Do not use UPPERCASE words, italicize them instead.

We've historically been pretty flexible with article style, but articles that follow this Style Guide will have a higher likelihood of being accepted!

When you're ready, you can press the Next button below to start writing an article using our Google Docs template.