Wiktionary:Form-of templates

About
Form-of templates are used...

Hierarchy
At the top of the hierarchy are tens of thousands of dictionary entries such as nests. The English noun section of that entry includes the code directly, with the language L=English implied. Template:pl of for plural forms is one of hundreds of form-of templates that lie at a low layer of the hierarchy.

At an intermediate stage are the entry templates, which can be used to create new entries depending on the ending of the word. In English, for instance, some inflected forms ending in s are nouns, some are verbs, and some are both. Although nests was not produced by this method, it could have been.

The verb section of nests was produced using the code, which expands to plus a trailing period. Language-specific form-of templates such as Template:en-s of are a different intermediate layer between the entries and the language-independent form-of templates. These templates must be employed with subst: for substitution. They should only be utilized when the more direct form-of templates are obscure in name.

At the deepest level of the heirarchy is Template:stylized root, which wraps the root term with the appropriate css classes. All language-independent form-of templates must transclude it. Any language-dependent form-of template, prefixed with a two- or three-letter language code, must transclude one or more language-independent form-of templates, as used on a single definition line.

Template:stylized root is deliberately cumbersome and not to be used within any dictionary entry directly. If necessary, the form-of templates can be circumvented using when no other template is appropriate.

Abbreviations
Standard abbreviations exist for form-of templates. The version whose name is fully expanded should redirect to the abbreviation is also allowed, except that certain words are necessarily excluded, namely:


 * form
 * mood
 * of (as the final word)
 * person
 * tense

For instance, "present tense form of" would be abbreviated as "pres" according to the list below. It would also be possible to use the full spelling "present".

Where two abbreviations are given, the first is preferred, and the second should redirect to the first.


 * abbreviation: abbr, abbrev
 * abessive: abes
 * ablative: abl (both conflict with other templates, as of now H. (talk) 12:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)), proposal: ablat
 * absolute: abs
 * accusative: acc
 * active: act
 * adessive: ades
 * allative: all
 * alternative: alt
 * apocopic: apoc
 * active: act
 * attributive: attr
 * combination: comb
 * comitative: comit
 * common: c
 * comparative: comp
 * conditional: cond
 * connegative: conneg
 * contraction: contr
 * dative: dat
 * definite: def
 * demonstrative: demon
 * elative: elat
 * essive: ess
 * feminine: f
 * fifth: 5th
 * first: 1st
 * formal: form
 * fourth: 4th
 * future: fut
 * genitive: gen
 * gerund: ger
 * illative: ill
 * imperfect: imperf
 * imperative: imper
 * impersonal: impers
 * indefinite: indef
 * indicative: indic
 * inessive: ines
 * infinitive: inf
 * informal: inform
 * instructive: instr
 * interrogative: inter
 * intransitive: intr
 * irregular: irreg
 * masculine: m
 * negative: neg
 * neuter: n
 * nominative: nom
 * participle: part
 * partitive: partit
 * passive: pas
 * perfect: perf
 * personal: pers
 * plural: pl, p (all three conflict with other templates, as of now H. (talk) 12:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)) proposal: plur
 * positive: pos
 * possessive: posses
 * potential: pot
 * predicative: predic
 * present: pres
 * preterite: pret
 * progressive: prog
 * pronominal: pron
 * reflexive: refl
 * relative: rel
 * second: 2nd
 * simple: sim
 * singular: s, sing
 * spelling: spell
 * subjunctive: subj
 * superlative: super
 * supine: sup
 * third: 3rd
 * transitive: tr
 * translative: transl
 * vocative: voc

Since all of the abbreviations are reserved for a specific use, for some words an abbreviation has not been established. A convenient abbreviation may expand to the full word via redirect. Abbreviations such as "trans" may vary depending on context and are not listed above, although they may also redirect be allowed for convenience. For instance, "pp" is not reserved, so Template:pp of redirects to Template:past part of for the past participle for English it is used for past participle, where the standard "past part" also works.

Suffixes are allowed as "-suffix". Certain words are too short to be abbreviated:


 * in: in
 * long: long
 * of: of (excluded when final)
 * past: past
 * short: short

Ordinals are passed as nth=number. If useful for a particular language, these can be called indirectly and abbreviated as "1st", "2nd", etc.