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Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Draft Trim

This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things look alike — it is a style guide. The following rules don't claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. In this regard the following quote from The Chicago Manual of Style deserves notice:
 * Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.

Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all these rules. The joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required. Copy-editing wikipedians will refer to this manual, and pages will either gradually be made to conform with this guide or this guide will itself be changed to the same effect.

Please see How to edit a page for information on how to use all the different forms of markup. There is much more available than just bold or italic. This article concentrates on when to use them, although the examples usually also show the markup.

Please see Guide to Layout for some simple suggestions on laying out an article. For articles about a particular event, it may be a good idea to understand News Style as convention for presenting materials in a straightforward way.

Contributors, note that because this document is considered policy, significant changes should be discussed on the talk page first, or they will be removed.

Article names
See Naming conventions for choosing a name for your article. It is customary for the title to be the subject of the first sentence of the article. Make article titles bold in the first sentence using three apostrophes  — do not self-link to embolden the title. Avoid putting links inside the emboldened title. Use bold italics  in the first sentence only for terms that would be in italics even if they were not set in bold, for example, book titles (this does not mean only terms that are always in italics; whether a word or phrase is in italics or not depends on context).

Free links
The use of so-called "free links" to other topics relevant to your article, for example,, is encouraged. Try to use links for all words and terms that are relevant to your article.

Avoid making too many links. A suggestion is that if 10% of the words are already linked, then perhaps some less vital link can be removed when more important links are added. Don't link every occurrence of a word; simply linking the first time the word appears will usually be enough. For dates like wikify every time so that the date preference of the reader will be used. Both day-month and year must be linked for the preference to work correctly.

Avoid linking words in article titles; find other ways to include and then link those words.

See also Make only links relevant to the context

Links that follow the Wikipedia naming conventions are much more likely to lead to existing articles, and, if there is not yet an article about that subject, good links will make the creation of a correctly-named article much easier for later writers.

It is possible to link words that are not exactly the same as the linked article title,  for example. Make sure, however, that it is still clear what the link refers to without having to follow the link. You can form plurals, adjectives and other phrases thus:.

Try to link accurately. If an article you want to link doesn't yet exist, do a quick search to find out if that is really the case. The article may have a different name than you expect.

Never use "click here" as the text for a link.

Syntax
The syntax for referencing a URL is simple. Just enclose it in single brackets:

The URL must begin with or another common protocol, such as or.

In addition, putting URLs in plain text with no markup automatically produces a link, for example http://en.wikipedia.org. However, this feature may disappear in a future release. Therefore, in cases where you wish to display the URL because it is intrinsically valuable information, it is better to use the short form of the URL (host name) as the optional text: produces en.wikipedia.org.

Link titles
You can add a title to an external link by supplying descriptive text after the URL separated by a space and enclosing it all in square brackets. For example, to add a title to a bare URL such as (this is rendered as "http://en.wikipedia.org"), use the following syntax: (this is rendered as "an open-content encyclopedia").

Some URLs are ugly and uninformative; in such cases, it is better for a meaningful title to be displayed rather than the URL itself. For example, "European Space Agency website" is much more reader-friendly than "http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html".

If the URL is displayed, make it as simple as possible; for example, if the index.html is superfluous, remove it (but be sure to check in preview mode first).

The "printable version" of a page displays all URLs in full, including those given a title, so no information is lost.

URLs as footnotes
Without the optional text, an external reference appears as a footnote: For example,

is displayed like this:

 *

Position in article
In most cases, it is preferable to group external links together at the bottom of the article in bullet point format under the heading:

As with other top-level headers, two equal signs should be used to markup the external links header (see Headings elsewhere in the article).

It is also possible to include an inline URL reference within the body of an article. For example:

is displayed like this:

 * One good example of a cooperative online community is the Wikipedia, an open-content encyclopedia.

If an article has used information from an external webpage or it is to be indicated that more information regarding the article will be available, such as statistics, picture gallery, essays on a website, then such links should be part of the "External links" section at the bottom of the article. If the external reference to be cited pertains to only a paragraph or a line in the article, then the use of inline external links as footnotes serves as a proper citation. Numbered footnote links can be used throughout the article.

Foreign-language sites
Since this is the English Wikipedia, webpages in English are highly preferred. Linking to non-English pages may still be useful for English-language readers in some cases:

 * when linking to pages with maps, diagrams, photos, tables; explain the key terms with the link, so that people who do not know the language can still interpret them
 * for example, if the subject of the article is a Spanish-language newspaper

In such cases indicate what language the site is in. For example:

 * El País, a Spanish-language newspaper from Madrid

File type
If the link is not to an HTML file, but to a file which must be opened in an external program, such as a PDF or Microsoft Word document, a remark about that is useful to help the user decide whether opening or first downloading is preferred.

File size
If the link is to a large file (in the case of html, including the images) a note about that is useful. Someone with a slow connection may decide not to use it.

Headings
Use the  style markup for headings, not   (bold). Example:

which produces

 * This is a heading

Note that when  is used, no blank line under the headline is needed. Extra blank lines are optional, and their presence (or absence) will not affect the appearance of your article.

If you mark headings this way, then a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article, sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.

 * Start the letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings with a capital letter, but leave the rest in lower case.
 * Avoid links within headings.
 * Overuse of sub-headings should be avoided.

For more information, see Manual of Style (headings).

Headings
As discussed in the Headings section above, only the first letter of the first word and proper nouns in headings should be in capitals.

Job titles
Job titles such as president, king, or emperor start with a capital letter when used as a title (followed by a name): "King Lear", not "king Lear". This is not the case when used generically: "when Hirohito was a Japanese emperor." However, if one is using the correct formal name of an office, it is treated as a proper noun. So: "Hirohito was Emperor of Japan". Exceptions may apply for specific offices.

In the case of a prime minister, write Prime Minister or prime minister. For example: "there are many prime ministers around the world." but "The British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said today . . . "

Remember also, users of American English and British English differ in their inclination to use capitals. British English uses capitals far more widely than American English does. This may apply to titles for people. If possible, as with spelling, use rules appropriate to the cultural and linguistic context. In other words, do not enforce American rules on pages to do with British topics. Neither should one rigidly enforce British rules on pages that are concerned with American topics.

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents
Names of religions should start with a capital letter. Mormonism requires special care — see Naming conventions (Mormonism). The name of a follower of a religious faith, or an adjective describing a religious faith should also begin with a capital letter.

As per The Chicago Manual of Style, deities in both monotheistic and polytheistic religions should start with a capital letter: God, Allah, Freya. This also applies to transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense&nbsp: Good and Truth. Similarly, alternative and descriptive names for deities: the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Messiah. Pronouns referring to deities or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity should not start with a capital letter.

However, philosophies, doctrines, and systems of economic thought should not start with a capital letter, unless the name is derived from a proper noun. Lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought, uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each party name being a proper noun).

Calendar items
Months, days, and holidays begin with a capital letter: June, Monday, Fourth of July.

 * Seasons
 * Seasons begin with lowercase letters when they are used generally. ("This summer was very hot", fall, autumn, winter, spring)
 * This is not always the case when they are used with another noun and function as proper nouns. (Winter Solstice, Autumn Open House)
 * Or when they are personified. ("I think Spring is showing her colors", Old Man Winter)

Animals, plants, and other organisms
Whether the common names of species should start with a capital letter has been hotly debated in the past and has remained unresolved. As a matter of truce both forms are acceptable (except for proper names), but a redirect should be created from the alternative form. See: WikiProject_Tree_of_Life'' See: Naming conventions (fauna)'' See: Capitalization''

Celestial bodies
Names of other planets and stars are proper nouns, and should begin with a capital letter. For example, "The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini".

The words sun, earth, and moon begin with a capital letter when used in an astronomical context as proper nouns: "The Sun is a main sequence star, with a spectral class of G2." In a non-scientific context, lowercase letters are used: "It was a lovely day and the sun was warm." However, these words only begin with a capital when they refer to the name of a specific body. "The Moon orbits the Earth", but "Pluto's moon Charon".

Directions and regions
Directions (such north and southwest) do not begin with a capital letter, unless they form part of proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as Southern California. Follow the same conventions for their related forms: a person from the American South is a Southerner, but a road that leads north might be called a northern road.

Where you are unsure whether a region has attained proper-noun status, we suggest using lowercase.

Contractions
In general, we prefer formal writing. Therefore, contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, and so on — are discouraged, except when you are quoting directly.

Punctuation
In most cases, simply follow the usual rules of English punctuation. A few points where the Wikipedia may differ from usual usage follow.

Quotation marks
With quotation marks, we suggest splitting the difference between American and British usage.

Although not a rigid rule, try to use the "double quotes" for most quotations, as they are easier to read on the screen, and use 'single quotes' for "quotations 'within' quotations".

Note however the following problem with single quotes: if a word appears in an article with single quotes, such as 'abcd', the Searching facility will find it only if you search for the word with quotes (when trying this out with the example mentioned, remember that this article is in the Wikipedia namespace).

When punctuating quoted passages, put punctuation where it belongs, inside or outside the quotation marks, depending on the meaning, and not rigidly within the quotation marks. This is the British style. (Fowler has good guidelines for this). For example, "Stop!" has the punctuation inside the quotation marks. However, when using "scare quotes", the comma goes outside.

Another example:
 * Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (we're quoting only part of a sentence)
 * Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." (full sentence is quoted)

For longer quotations, an indented style may be better. This is done by prepending a colon to the first line. Since quotations are already marked by quotation marks or indentations, they need not be in italics.

Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes
For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes:

not curved (smart) ones or grave accents:
 * ‘ ’ “ ” `

If you are pasting text from Microsoft Word, remember to turn off the smart quotes feature by unmarking this feature in AutoEdit and "AutoEdit during typing"! . Many other modern word processors have a smart quotes setting — please read the appropriate documentation for your editor.

The grave accent ( ` ) is also used as a diacritical mark to indicate a glottal stop; however, the straight quote should be used for this purpose instead (e.g., Hawai'i, not Hawai`i).

Spaces after periods/stops
There are no current guidelines on whether to use one or two spaces after a period but note that the difference only shows up in the edit box (unless you use  to force it otherwise). See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spaces after a period).

Commas
As stated by Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White, and other sources, when a conjunction joins the last two elements in a series of three or more elements, a comma is used before the conjunction: "The wires were brown, blue, and green." The reason for the final serial comma is to prevent the last two elements from being confused as a unit. Consider its utility in this sentence: "The author would like to thank her parents, Sinead O'Connor and Pope John-Paul II."

Dashes
The use of dashes on Wikipedia is often under dispute. Please read Manual of Style (dashes) and its talk page for details.

Scientific style

 * See Technical terms and definitions
 * For units of measure use SI units; see also Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Note that the Wikipedia Style for very large numbers is 10,000 or scientific notation and not the SI notation 10 000 with a space.
 * In articles about chemicals and chemistry, use the style of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry for chemical names wherever possible, except in article titles, where the common name should be used if different, followed by mention of the IUPAC name.
 * In periodic table groups, use the new IUPAC names: (these use Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals or letters).
 * For mathematics and mathematical formulae, see WikiProject Mathematics

Introduction
All articles should have the title or subject in bold in the first line and sometimes also in italic if that word or phrase is normally in italics or should be in italics for some other context-dependent reason; see Manual of Style (titles). The title or subject can almost always be made part of the first sentence, but some articles simply have names.
 * The Pythagorean theorem is named after and attributed to the 6th century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras

 * Tom and Jerry — Pairing of names from Pierce Egan's Life in London

If the subject of the article has more than one name, each new form of the name should be in bold on its first appearance.
 * Sodium hydroxide (NaOH), also known as caustic soda or lye

It is preferable to make the context clear in the first few words. For example,
 * In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

Lead section
The lead section is the section before the first headline. It is shown above the table of contents (for pages with more than three headlines). The appropriate lead length depends on the length of the article, but should be no longer than three paragraphs in any case. See Lead section for more details.

"See also" and "Related topics" sections
Ideally, topics related to an article are included within the text of the article as free links. If the article is divided into sections and See also refers to a particular section only, references to related articles that have not been linked from free links in the text may be handled by this form, placed at the bottom of the section:

which produces:
 * See also: Internet troll, flaming.

The above form may also be used in short articles without sections.

When the See also refers to the entire article, not just a section, it should be a heading of level 2 so that it appears in the table of contents. It should be placed at the bottom of the article, but before External links. Again, do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article. If you remove a redundant link from the See also section of an article, it may be an explicit cross reference (see below), so consider making the link in the main text bold instead.

 example

Which appears as:
 * See also
 * Internet troll
 * flaming

Another equally valid form is:
 * Related topics
 * Expressionism
 * Cubism

Sometimes it is useful to have an explicit cross-reference in the text, for example, when a long section of text has been moved somewhere else, or there is a major article on a subtopic. In these cases, make the link bold so that its significance is easier to identify. Example:

 * The legal situation with regard to circumcision varies from country to country (see Legal status of circumcision).

or

 * The legal status of circumcision varies from country to country.

(See Section).

Other Sections
Other common sections (in their preferable order) are:

References

Compare against

External links

Simple tabulation
Any line that starts with a blank space becomes a fixed font width and can be used for simple tabulation. See English plural for many examples.

foo    bar     baz alpha  beta    gamma

A line that starts with a blank space with nothing else on it forms a blank line which may be just what you want or not if you are one of those typists who put two spaces after a period. You can cause a blank line unknowingly if those blanks are wrapped to the beginning of the next line.

Usage and spelling
Cultural clashes over grammar, spelling and when to use capital letters are a common experience on Wikipedia. Remember that millions of people may have been taught to use a different form of English from yours. For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English. However, there is a certain etiquette generally accepted on Wikipedia:
 * Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings (it can be jarring to the reader). In particular, for individual words and word-endings. For example, do not use center (American) in one place and centre (British) in another.
 * Proper names should retain their original spellings. For example, United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force.
 * Articles which focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally aim to conform to the spelling of that country (for instance the British "Labour Party"). A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring. However, a reference to "the American labour movement" would be okay on New Labour.
 * When referring to the United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country, is easier to search for automatically, and we want one uniform style on this. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used.
 * If the spelling appears in an article name, you should make a redirect page to accommodate the other variant, as with Aeroplane and Airplane, or if possible and reasonable, a neutral word might be chosen as with Glasses.
 * If the spelling appears within the article text, also consider a consistent synonym such as focus or middle rather than center/centre.
 * If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please don't be too quick to make accusations!)
 * Consult Wikipedia articles such as English plural and American and British English differences.
 * Scholarly abbreviations of Latin terms like i.e., or e.g. should be avoided and English terms such as such as and for example used instead.
 * If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article who used a word with variant spellings in the article or the title.
 * If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to an alternative that is often regarded as incorrect. Thus "other meanings" should be used rather than "alternate meaning" or "alternative meaning". Some dictionaries discourage or do not even acknowledge this latter use of alternate. The American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Note" at alternative says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate." But, alternative is also not entirely acceptable because of the very common connotations in American English of "non-traditional" or "out-of-the-mainstream". Some traditional usage experts consider alternative to be appropriate only when there are exactly two alternatives.
 * For topics that have unique vocabularies, for example rail transport, effort should be made to adequately explain jargon or avoid its use where possible. This has another purpose, as in the case given, disparate terminology has evolved in different locations around the world (see rail terminology as an example). In other words, even experts in another location may not be familiar with jargon used in your location.

Words as words
Put words in italics when they are being written about, rather than being used to write about what they refer to. Similarly for letters.
 * The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787

 * The letter E is the most common letter in English.

Pictures
Main article: Picture tutorial

Articles with a single picture are encouraged to have that picture at the top of the article, right-aligned, but this is not a hard and fast rule. Portraits with the head looking to the right should be left-aligned (looking into the article). Please put the image at the top of the article, before the text begins.

The current image markup language is more or less this:

Captions
Photos and other graphics should have captions unless they are "self-captioning" as in reproductions of album or book covers, or when the graphic is an unambiguous depiction of the subject of the article. For example, in a biography article, it is presumed that the portrait is that of the person in the article, thus a caption is not necessary (unless more than one person is in the picture).

See Captions for tips on writing captions.

Identity
This is perhaps one area where wikipedians' flexibility and plurality are an asset, and where one would not wish all pages to look exactly alike. Nevertheless, here are some guidelines:
 * When writing an article about specific people or specific groups, use the terminology which they themselves use (self identification).
 * Use the most specific terminology available: describe people of Ethiopian descent as Ethiopian, not African.
 * In case this is objectionable, often a more general name will prove to be more neutral or more accurate. For example, although to have a List of African-American composers would be acceptable, a List of composers of African descent, in this case, is more useful.
 * If possible, instead of using nouns directly, terms should be given in such a way that they qualify other nouns. Thus, black people, not blacks; gay people, not gays; adults with disabilities, not the disabled; and so forth.
 * Do not assume that any one term is the most inclusive or accurate.

Style recommendations regarding the use of Categories
See also Categorization and Categorization of people. Note that a system of classifying articles by category was only fully deployed in Wikipedia in 2004.

Biographies
See Manual of Style (biographies).

Captions
See Captions.

Citing sources
See Cite sources.

Dates, numbers, measurements
See Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

Headings
See Manual of Style (headings).

Linking to sister projects
See Manual of Style (sister projects).

Lists
See List.

Naming conventions
See Naming_conventions.

Proper names
See Proper_names.

Specific countries
Separate Wikipedia style manuals exist for material in the English Wikipedia regarding several other cultures and languages. These attempt to lay out Wikipedia standards for transliteration to English, renderings of place names, name order and other thorny cultural and linguistic issues.

 * Manual of Style for China-related articles
 * Manual of Style for Japan-related articles
 * Manual of Style for Thailand-related articles

Titles
See Manual of Style (titles).

Trademarks
See Manual of Style (trademarks).

Wikiprojects
If you can't find anything specific enough for a particular type of article, see WikiProject — some of these WikiProjects set out boilerplates for certain areas of knowledge.

When all else fails
If you are faced with a fine point, please use other resources, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (from the University of Chicago Press) or Fowler's Modern English Usage (from the Oxford University Press). Where this page differs from the other sources, the usage on this page should be preferred, but please feel free to carry on a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style, especially for substantive changes.

Even simpler, look at an article that you like and open it for editing to see how the editors have put it together. You can then close the window without saving changes, though almost every article can be improved.

Keep it simple
It's easier for you and whoever follows you if you don't get too fancy with your markup. Even with markup as suggested here, don't assume that any markup you put in is guaranteed to have a certain appearance when it is displayed.

It's easier to display the Wikipedia and edit it, if the markup is no more complex than necessary to display the information in a useful and comprehensible way. A useful encyclopedia is the first goal, but ease of editing and maintaining that encyclopedia is right behind it.

Among other things, this means use HTML markup sparingly and only with good reason.

Further information
It is a good idea to read through and understand these documents:

Note to contributors to this page: We need to go over all these and make sure they're up-to-date too.

 * Introduction is a gentle introduction to the world of Wikipedia.
 * Be bold in updating pages should define your attitude toward page updates.
 * Policies and guidelines is the main stop for policies and, well, guidelines.
 * Avoiding common mistakes gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them.
 * Lee's notes on writing style contains one Wikipedian's advice on good language usage.
 * Editing policy has even more editing guidelines.
 * How to edit a page will explain the mechanics of what codes are available to you when editing a page, to do things like titles, links, external links, and so on.
 * Perfect stub article shows what you should aim for at a minimum when starting a new article.
 * WikiProject History — style guidelines for history
 * Definitions

Formatting issues
Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases.

Make comments invisible
Try to avoid highlighting that the article is incomplete and in need of further work. Similarly, there is little benefit to the reader in seeing headings and tables without content.

If you want to communicate with other potential editors, make comments invisible to the ordinary article reader. To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within  and.

For example, the following:

is displayed (or rather, is not displayed) as:

so the comment can be seen when viewing the HTML or wiki source.

Explain jargon
Explain jargon


text:
User:Iggykin

I am interested in software, biotechnology, materials and energy. I also blog on blogger

Favorite Wikipedia pages and guidelines

 * User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia
 * External links
 * Spam
 * Template_messages
 * How to copy-edit

Articles I have worked on

 * Exploration of Mars
 * Manned mission to Mars

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Iggykin


text:
The X-Files (film)

The X-Files (also known as The X-Files: Fight the Future) is a 1998 American science fiction thriller film based on Chris Carter's television series of the same name,  which revolves around fictional unsolved cases called the X-Files and the characters solving them. It was directed by Rob Bowman, written by Carter and Frank Spotnitz and featured five main characters from the television series: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi, John Neville, and William B. Davis reprise their respective roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, Well-Manicured Man, and the Cigarette-Smoking Man. The film was promoted with the tagline Fight the Future.

The film takes place between seasons five (episode "The End") and six (episode "The Beginning") of the television series, and is based upon the series' extraterrestrial mythology. The story follows agents Mulder and Scully, removed from their usual jobs on the X-Files, and investigating the bombing of a building and the destruction of criminal evidence. They uncover what appears to be a government conspiracy attempting to hide the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.

Carter decided to make a feature film to explore the show's mythology on a wider scale and appeal to non-fans. He wrote the story with Frank Spotnitz at the end of 1996 and, with a budget from 20th Century Fox, filming began in 1997, following the end of the show's fourth season. Carter assembled cast and crew from the show, as well as some other, well-known actors such as Blythe Danner and Martin Landau, to begin production on what they termed "Project Blackwood". The film was produced by Carter and Daniel Sackheim. Mark Snow continued his role as X-Files composer to create the film's score.

The film premiered on June 19, 1998, in the United States, and received mixed reviews from critics but was a box office success, earning $189 million worldwide against a budget of $66 million. A sequel, titled I Want to Believe, was released ten years later.

Plot
In 35,000 B.C. during the Ice Age, in what will become North Texas, two cavemen hunters encounter an extraterrestrial life form in a cave, which kills one and infects the other with a black oil-like substance. In 1998, in the same area, a boy falls into a hole and is also infected by a black substance which seeps from the ground. Firefighters who enter the hole to rescue him do not come out. A team of men wearing hazmat suits later extract the bodies of the boy and the firefighters. Meanwhile, FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, while investigating a bomb threat against a federal building in Dallas, discover the bomb in a building across the street. As the building is evacuated, Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud remains, ostensibly to disarm the bomb. However, he simply waits for the bomb to detonate.

Mulder and Scully are later chastised because, in addition to Michaud, four other people were in the building during the bombing. That evening, Mulder is accosted by paranoid doctor Alvin Kurtzweil, who explains that the "victims" were already dead, and that the bombing was staged to cover up how they died. At the hospital morgue, Scully examines one of the victims, finding evidence of an alien virus. Meanwhile, the Cigarette Smoking Man goes to Texas, where Dr. Ben Bronschweig shows him one of the lost firefighters, who has an alien organism residing inside his body. He orders Bronschweig to administer a vaccine to it, but to burn the body if it fails. Later, the alien organism gestates and kills Bronschweig.

Mulder and Scully travel to the crime scene in Texas and find the site has been hastily turned into a new playground, and encounter the boys whose friend fell into the hole. Driving in the direction indicated by the boys, the pair encounters a train with white gasoline tankers and follow it to a cornfield surrounding two glowing domes. Inside the domes, grates in the floor open and swarms of bees fly out, overwhelming the agents. They flee through an adjacent cornfield, chased by black helicopters, but manage to escape when the helicopters disappear.

At Washington, D.C., Scully attends a performance hearing; meanwhile, Mulder meets with Kurtzweil in an attempt to get more information. Scully arrives at Mulder's apartment to tell him she has been transferred to Salt Lake City. Mulder is devastated to lose his partner. The two are about to kiss when Scully is stung by a bee that had lodged itself under her shirt collar. She falls unconscious while Mulder calls paramedics, but the ambulance driver shoots Mulder and whisks Scully away. She is seen later in an isolation unit being loaded onto a plane. An unconscious Mulder is picked up by another ambulance. Not severely injured, he slips out of the hospital with the help of The Lone Gunmen and FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner. He then meets a former adversary, the Well-Manicured Man, who gives him Scully's location, along with a vaccine against the virus that has infected her. As Mulder leaves, the Well-Manicured Man kills himself in a car bomb, before his betrayal of The Syndicate is discovered.

In Antarctica 48 hours later, Mulder finds Scully in an underground facility containing many humans suspended in ice-like enclosures. He breaks Scully's confinement and uses the vaccine to revive her, but this disrupts the facility and the cocooned aliens begin trying to escape. After Mulder and Scully escape to the surface, an alien vessel emerges from beneath the ice and travels into the sky. Mulder watches it disappear into the distance as Scully regains full consciousness.

At another hearing, Scully's testimony is disregarded and evidence in Texas is destroyed. To the hearing moderator, she hands over the only remaining proof of their ordeal—the bee that stung her—noting that the FBI is not currently capable of investigating this evidence. Outside, Mulder reads an article that has covered up the domes and crop field in Texas. Scully reveals that she is willing to continue working with him: "If I quit now, they win."

At another crop outpost in Tunisia, the Cigarette Smoking Man warns Conrad Strughold that Mulder remains a threat, as he explains what Mulder has found out about the virus. He then hands him a telegram revealing that the X-files unit has been re-opened.

Cast

 * David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder
 * Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully
 * Martin Landau as Alvin Kurtzweil
 * Blythe Danner as Jana Cassidy
 * Armin Mueller-Stahl as Conrad Strughold
 * Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner
 * William B. Davis as Cigarette-Smoking Man
 * John Neville as Well-Manicured Man
 * Dean Haglund as Richard "Ringo" Langly
 * Bruce Harwood as John Fitzgerald Byers
 * Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike
 * Jeffrey DeMunn as Ben Bronschweig
 * Jason Beghe as FBI Man at Bomb Site
 * Michael Shamus Wiles as Black-Haired Man
 * Terry O'Quinn as Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud
 * Lucas Black as Stevie
 * Gary Grubbs as Fire Captain Cooles
 * Don S. Williams as First Elder
 * George Murdock as Second Elder

Conception and pre-production
After five successful seasons, Chris Carter wanted to tell the story of the series on a wider scale, which ultimately meant creating a feature film. He later explained that the main problem was to create a story for which the viewer would not need to be familiar with the show's setting and the various story arcs.

Carter and Frank Spotnitz wrote major parts of the script in Hawaii over Christmas 1996. They used the same method that they had used when writing episodes and sketching out scenes for the series on 3x5 index cards. By the time the Christmas break had ended, the whole narrative for the film had been written. Upon his return from Hawaii, Carter looked for spare time to write the script. He returned to Hawaii and in ten days wrote about half of the 124-page screenplay for the film.

Carter gave 90 pages of the screenplay to Fox who received it well. While not officially greenlighted, he got a budget from Fox and began to make plans as to when and where it would be filmed. Carter then enlisted Daniel Sackheim as a producer on the film. Sackheim had previously produced the pilot episode of The X-Files and directed several episodes in the first two seasons. The X-Files marked his first contribution as producer to a feature film. Carter's choice for director was Rob Bowman, who had been the series' executive producer and a director before the production base was moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles.

During production, the filmmakers went to great lengths to preserve secrecy, including printing the script on red paper to prevent photocopying, and leaking disinformation to the media and giving the film the codename "Project Blackwood". The code was cracked by fans who speculated on the meaning behind it. During the North Texas scene, "Blackwood County" can be seen on the fire trucks responding to the infected boy. According to Spotnitz, "Blackwood" held no particular significance.

At the beginning of the pre-production phase, Carter and Bowman were busy with the television series, leaving Sackheim to work alone. Sackheim hired executive producer Lata Ryan, who had previously collaborated with Steven Spielberg for his 1993 film, Jurassic Park. Once hired, Ryan was allowed to read the script in front of the Ten Thirteen Productions staff members—but not to take it away. At this time, most of the staff members had not read the script for themselves. After Ryan accepted the offer of becoming executive producer, Chris Nowak was hired as production designer, Ward Russell as director of photography and Bill Liams as construction coordinator. According to Ryan, they had secured all key personnel six weeks before principal filming began.

Writing and casting
Both Carter and Spotnitz wanted to make the film "bigger" than the series, so they decided to start and end the film at an "extreme place" and explain aspects of the story arc that the show had not. While gathering research materials, they learned that the Earth was once covered with ice and decided to open the film in Texas in 35,000 BC with human "Primitives" as the first characters to appear.

The film included known actors from the show such as David Duchovny as Fox Mulder, Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner and William B. Davis as the Cigarette Smoking Man, as well as new actors and characters to the franchise. These included Martin Landau and Blythe Danner. The signing of these actors broke with what had become tradition for The X-Files. Carter had purposely cast virtually unknown actors for the television series, to make it more believable; "As soon as you put in an actor whose face is very recognizable, you've got a situation that works against the reality of the show." He saw creating the film as a chance to break this rule. He offered Glenne Headly the small role of a bartender. A fan of the show, she accepted enthusiastically.

Set design
Chris Nowak was hired as production designer for the film by Daniel Sackheim. Nowak was a former architect who had worked as a professional theater set designer for eight years, before moving towards the film business as an art director. Nowak had previously worked with Sackheim on a television production, which led to Sackheim contacting him to do an interview for the selection of a production designer. According to Sackheim, Nowak was hired because he was the only one able to create a "focused vision" for the film.

Nowak wanted to start the design process after talking through the story with the filmmakers so that he could formulate "a sense of the atmosphere" which they wanted to create for the film. He wanted to create a "dark, scary and oppressive environment" for the characters, especially Mulder. While familiar with the television series, Nowak decided not to review any episodes as preparation for his role in the production. Explaining this decision, he said, "I wanted the movie to be as fresh and new as possible in its design. Of course, there were some elements from the show that had to be retained."

The design department found all their locations and designed sets in eight weeks, guided by input from the filmmakers. Nowak started by creating artwork for all the major sets and locations, working with the two concept artists Tim Flattery and Jim Martin. Nowak created drafts and sent them to Flattery and Martin who continued to develop them until they were complete. The complete artwork was then presented to Chris Carter, Rob Bowman, Lata Ryan and Sackheim for approval. While considering the time schedule, they made no notable changes to the artwork.

Once the set concepts were approved by Carter, Bowman, Sackheim and Ryan, they were sent to the blueprint stage so that construction of the sets could begin under the supervision of construction coordinator Bill Liams. All the major sets were constructed "simultaneously" because of the schedule. However, this proved to be a challenge for the production team, because it meant they had to pay the rent on all the stages at the same time. The set construction started seven weeks before filming.

Filming
Carter and Bowman wanted to film in as many different locations as possible to give the film a "grander" feel than had usually been achievable for the television episodes. The tighter schedule, with only eight weeks of pre-production and 45 days of principal photography, still caused the production to have less location shooting than planned. Los Angeles ended up standing in for Dallas and London (though a shot was done in London with a double), and the ice scenes, initially envisaged for an ice field in Alaska, were moved to Whistler, British Columbia, nearby the show's regular locations in Vancouver. Principal photography for the film started on June 16, 1997.

The X-Files was filmed in the hiatus between the show's fourth and fifth seasons and re-shoots were conducted during the filming of the show's fifth season. Due to the demands of the film shoot on the actors' schedules, some episodes of the fifth season did not revolve around both Mulder and Scully but just one of the two lead stars.

Music
Two soundtracks, The X-Files: Original Motion Picture Score and The X-Files: The Album were both released to home markets in 1998. The X-Files: The Album included a take on the original theme song by the American duo The Dust Brothers, and included a hidden track on which Chris Carter details a summary of The X-Files mythology. Mark Snow, who had worked on the television series as a composer, was hired to score the film. Chris Carter wanted a "very minimal approach" to the music. He did not want much "melody" and wanted to replace it with plain "ambient atmosphere" and "sound design". Snow mixed electronic music with an 85-member orchestra to give the film a "great sense of scope and grandeur."

When creating the music for the film, Snow had a couple of months to write and produce the music, composing the television series simultaneously. The film marked the first time in the history of the franchise that music was composed and recorded with the help of an orchestra, although, according to Snow, there was no significant change in the recording and writing process during the production of the film. The most substantial difference was that Snow used MIDI files to save his musical scores and pieces, which would afterward be sent to a copyist who would take it through one of their programs and eventually give it to the orchestrators.

Theatrical run
The film was distributed by 20th Century Fox and premiered theatrically in the United States (as well as Canada) on June 19, 1998, along with Disney's Mulan. It closed after 14 weeks, with its widest release having been 2,650 theaters.

Home media
The same year as the international theatrical release, The X Files was released on VHS on October 13, 1998 with an Extended Cut that is 41 seconds longer than the theatrical release. The VHS comes in either pan and scan fullscreen or widescreen releases and both versions are THX certified. The film later appeared on DVD in Region 1 on May 4, 1999 and in Region 2 on January 24, 2000. On January 23, 2001, the DVD was released once again, this time featuring a DTS enhanced widescreen version and THX Optimode. In 2008, producer Frank Spotnitz announced plans to release a new special edition DVD and Blu-ray edition of the film. "We are working on packing the [re-issued] DVD and Blu-ray releases with as many extras as they will fit, including video and audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, bloopers, trailers, a new documentary, and several other cool surprises." The Blu-ray version was released on December 2, 2008. In addition, a novelization of the film was written by Elizabeth Hand and released on June 19, 1998.

Television airing
The film was originally scheduled to air on Fox on September 14, 2001, but was pulled following the September 11 attacks which happened three days prior to its scheduled airing. It was replaced with a repeat airing of Nine Months. This also happened to Independence Day, which was pulled from its scheduled September 16, 2001 airing as There's Something About Mary took its spot.

Box office
The film grossed $83,898,313 in the U.S. and $105,278,110 abroad, giving a total worldwide gross of $189,176,423. In its opening weekend, showing at 2,629 theaters, it earned $30,138,758 which was 35.9% of its total gross. According to Box Office Mojo, it ranked at No. 23 for all films released in the U.S. in 1998 and No. 10 for PG-13 rated films released that year.

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 66% rating based on reviews from 73 critics and an average rating of 6.1/10. The consensus states, "Results may vary for newcomers, but fans of the series will enjoy its big-screen transition." On Metacritic the film has a score of 60 out of 100, based on reviews from 23 critics. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A− on scale of A to F.

Roger Ebert gave a positive review of the film with three out of four stars, saying, "As pure movie, The X-Files more or less works. As a story, it needs a sequel, a prequel, and Cliff Notes." Gene Siskel also gave the film three out of four stars, saying that he was intrigued by the characters and was "now seriously tempted to watch the TV show." Joyce Millman of Salon was more equivocal, writing, "... You really can't treat The X-Files as a movie because it isn't one. It's a two-hour episode of the show," and said it was far from the "most satisfying" of X-Files releases. San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Bob Graham was positive towards the film, calling "David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson [...] enormously sympathetic heroes." Michael O'Sullivan, a reviewer from The Washington Post called the film, "stylish, scary, sardonically funny and at times just plain gross."

Los Angeles Times reviewer Kenneth Turan felt that it was difficult to make sense of the film, saying that it relied too heavily on the series' mythology. Lisa Alspector wrote that "Only two scenes in this spin-off are worth the time of followers of the TV series." Variety reviewer Todd McCarthy remarked, "As it is, the pic serves up set-pieces and a measure of scope that are beyond TV size but remain rather underwhelming by feature standards." Janet Maslin of The New York Times responded negatively towards the film, opining that it was uneventful and scorning the "hush-hush atmosphere" surrounding the production. Andrew Johnston reviewed the film in Time Out New York and observed: "The X-Files has always been the most cinematic show on TV, and Bowman (who's directed many of its best episodes) expands the show's scale and impact on the big screen while keeping its charms intact."

Sequel
The X-Files has spawned one sequel, a 2008 film entitled The X-Files: I Want to Believe released six years after the series ended. The film grossed $68 million and received a lower approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes than the first film. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Chris Carter announced that if I Want to Believe proved successful, he would propose that a third film go back to the television series' mythology and focus on the alien invasion foretold within the series, due to occur in December 2012. No third film appeared; instead, the TV series was revived in 2016.

title: The X-Files (film)


text:
Semicollared flycatcher

The semicollared flycatcher (Ficedula semitorquata) is a small passerine bird in the Old World flycatcher family, one of the four species of Western Palearctic black-and-white flycatchers. It breeds in montane forests of the southeastern corner of Europe (Balkan Peninsula) to Northwest Iran. It is migratory, wintering in Central and Eastern Africa. It is a rare vagrant in western Europe. Tracking studies using geolocators have revealed that weather conditions during spring migration can have a large impact on the timing of Semicollared flycatcher migration and survival of adult birds.

This is a 12–13.5 cm long bird, intermediate in appearance between collared flycatcher and European pied flycatcher. It has often been classed as a subspecies of collared flycatcher. The breeding male is mainly black above and white below, with a white half-collar, extending further back than in pied, large white wing patch, extensively white tail sides and a large white forehead patch. It has a pale grey rump. The bill is black and has the broad but pointed shape typical of aerial insectivores. It mainly takes insects in flight, rarely hunting caterpillars amongst the tree foliage like pied flycatcher.

Non-breeding male, females and juvenile semi-collared flycatchers have the black replaced by a pale brown, and may be very difficult to distinguish from other  Ficedula flycatchers, particularly the collared flycatcher. A distinction is that semicollared may show a white second wing bar, but many individuals are not separable in the field.

Semicollared flycatchers are birds of belts of deciduous woodlands, especially oak and hornbeam, in mountainous areas. They build an open nest in a native tree-holes and old nests of woodpeckers, also the species can occupy nest-boxes. The clutch size is 4-7 eggs. The song is again intermediate between collared and pied flycatchers, with slow strained whistles, but some rhythmic elements.

title: Semicollared flycatcher