People

For people, include their birth and death years (when known), and only enough descriptive information that the reader can distinguish between different people with the same name. Keep in mind the conventions for birth and death dates, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates of birth and death.

John Smith is the name of: John Smith (filmmaker) (born 1952), London-based avant-garde filmmaker John Smith (mathematician) (18th century), mathematician at the University of Oxford, 1766–1797 John Smith (Ohio Senator) (1735–1824)

Order of entries

In most cases, place the items in order of usage, with the most-used meanings appearing at the top and less common meanings below. A recommended order is:

1. Articles with a clarifier in parentheses ( Anticipation (music))
2. Articles with the item as part of the name ( Computer keyboard as part of a Keyboard dab page)
3. Synonyms
4. Larger subject articles which treat this item in a section ( Medieval art from a Fresco dab page)

Unless the list is quite short, separate the articles in categories (1) and (2) from those in (3) and (4), with the "may also be" line shown below:

Thingymabob may refer to: Thingymabob (mathematics), the square root of minus-pi Thingymabob (music), a note slightly higher than Q-sharp House thingymabob, a phallic door-knocker Computer thingymabob, carving-knife device for cutting off mouse's tail Thingymabob may also be: Whatchamacallit Doodad A fetish used in Tribal ceremonies

The "See also" section

There may be a "See also" section which can include:

• Articles where Title is part of the name, for example
  • Title City, Title County, or Title Township
  • Title School, Title College, or Title University
  • Title River, or Title Island
• People with Title as a surname — if there are more than a handful of these, a separate Title (name) or Title (surname) page should be created
• People with Title as a given name (rare/unusual names only — otherwise, entries should be moved to a separate Title (name) or Title (given name) page)
• Terms which can be confused with Title, for example Fob and FOB
• Likely misspellings of Title, for example Belmont, Belmonte and Bellmont

Break rules

For every style suggestion above, there's some page which has a good reason to do something else. These guidelines are intended for consistency, but usefulness to the reader is the principal goal. So ignore these guidelines if you have a good reason.

People

Same as above.

The main section of a 2 name (Given name and Surname) dab should include all individuals who are best known by that given and Surname regardless of the existence/use of middle names, middle initials, maiden names, married names or middle name usage as given name. (I believe this is current usage of {{hndis}}).

Order of entries

Small lists

1. Primary (if existent)
2. Alphabetical Secondaries

Large list

1. Primary (if existent)
2. Alphabetical Categories of multiple alphabetical links
3. Remaining Other names alphabetical

The "See also" section

1. Section including all alternate given names commonly substituted for or interchanged with Titular given name with a final entry for the surname.
2. Section including all slight misspellings of the surname and the List of People by Name 3 letter section. By slight misspelling Griffin might include Griffith and vice versa although only Griffith would include Griffiths or Griffeth. Herein, slight misspelling generally means off by one character, letter, digraph or diphthong.
3. Section of all names that include the titular names although only one appears to be used as either the titular given name or titular surname.
4. In the case where both given name and surname are both common as given and surnames (Anthony, Alexander, James, Thomas) a section listing alternate order. Thus, The Thomas Anthony page could have an Anthony Thomas section in the see also. However, Philip Thomas would not have a Thomas Philips section because of the slight misspelling.
5. Other things section where places and things named after the person and including his name are included.

There should also be a formatting preference for singleton interchanged substitutes titular given names. I.E., I propose that when one of the substitutes is a singleton without a dab (e.g., Robb Johnson) that it have a {{seealso}} hatnote such as

{{seealso|Bob Johnson|Rob Johnson|Bobby Johnson|Robert Johnson}} resulting in a hatnote reading

The above examples show some various cases for discussion purposes.

1. We have the question of order. If included does surname variation belong before middle name variation.

2. Do cases where the title last name is the middle name belong together or separate from cases where the title first name is the middle name if included. (Is there a maiden name policy).

3. If included should the surname dab read:

• For all other first names see Johnson
• Johnson

4. Is it still right to have these for shorter names. I have had some several persons object to adding such a section on shorter names until shown longer names.

5. Do we want to add a given name dab to the policy.

The biggest problem I see is with the shorter lists and lists of given names without extant alternate given name entries. For these names it is not apparent why this convention is ameliorative.