User:Rustylhenderson/sandbox

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Gorilla Nixon is digital artist who gain prominence through his ability to use color and code to create pieces of art.

Templates examined in this page

Template s-start is to be used with the rest of the succession templates. The following is a list of all succession templates, with the exception of headers:

Template:s-start: Start a succession box
Template:s-end: End a succession box
Template:s-break: For creating breaks (a replacement for hard-coding "|-")
Template:s-bef: For listing predecessors
Template:s-aft: For listing successors
Template:s-ttl: For listing titles and years
Template:s-new: For new titles
Template:s-non: For no successors
Template:s-inc: For incumbents
Template:s-vac: For vacant titles (predecessor or successor)
Template:s-tul: For titular monarchs (legitimate but not ruling)
Template:s-hou: For royal house/individual information
Template:s-ref: For citations of succession boxes
Template:s-line: Used for succession boxes of rail and subway/underground railway networks

The first five items on the list are the most basic for the creation of succession boxes and the most heavily used throughout Wikipedia; the others (with the exception of s-hou and s-line) are used as substitutes for one of the first five, depending on the circumstances.

Note that s-line is not currently described in this page, something that will, however, change in the future.

A list of the templates and all their parameters, along with basic information about the use of each template and parameter, can be found in SBS's Cheatsheet.

Parameters

Most templates work in the same way: the template's name is written between double curly brackets, and the text or code of the template appears in the page. A basic difference of succession templates is that most of them require the editor to include names, titles, or other text that will be displayed in the boxes, and which is different every time.

Such text is inserted into the templates by means of parameters, fields separated from the template name and from each other with pipes ( | ). The function of parameters is to alter the appearance of the cells created by these templates, usually by adding specially formatted text or changing the text already present. Although some parameters simply accept the desired text and are told apart by their place within the template, many parameters have names, separated from the text by an equal sign ( = ); while in the first case empty parameters must still be included if before one with text, many (but not all) named parameters can be omitted if they are not used, irrespective of their position. Furthermore, some named parameters do not require text at all; the simple inclusion of their name will activate a feature of the template. Blank spaces may be inserted between the text and the pipes, equal signs, and double curly brackets, but this is not necessary and can sometimes even be confusing.

In the following example, "s-vac" is the name of the template, "abeyance" is a parameter without any text but its name, and "last" is a parameter with both a name and text, in this case enclosed in double square brackets (thus wiki-linked).

Most succession templates accept parameters; the inclusion of some of them is essential for the correct function of the templates, while the inclusion of others is optional. The only templates from the list of the previous section that do not accept any parameters are s-start/start and end/s-end. Most of the header templates, however, are also used without parameters.

There are various types of parameters. There are parameters that allow for the inclusion of names, titles, and dates, both obligatory and optional. The row parameter allows for the creation of complex tables and is described lower in this page. And the title parameters change the text normally appearing in s-new, s-inc, and s-vac.

Instructions for use

There are many types of succession boxes, as the combinations of the various templates previously mentioned are virtually endless. We shall begin by demonstrating the use of simple boxes, and proceed with the analysis of more complex boxes of many lines and multiple titles.

Simple boxes

The very purpose of a succession box is to show the place of the subject of the box (the person—or other entity—whose article the box is in) in a succession of people (henceforth referred to as a succession chain). Because of this, most boxes include three people, namely the subject, their predecessor, and their successor.

The quintessential succession box consists of three cells, which go from left to right in the same order that the three persons' terms succeeded each other: the left cell names the predecessor, the middle one names the title of the subject and the years that mark their term in an office (the person's name is already mentioned in the article's title and is thus not repeated here), and the right one names the successor.

Simply enough, the creation of a box follows the same order. First comes the predecessor (template s-bef), the title and years follow (template s-ttl), and then comes the successor (template s-aft). It should not be forgotten, of course, that every succession box opens with the s-start template, and ends with the end template. Each command should be given its own line in the edit box.