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The opening sentence or opening line stands at the beginning of a written work. The opening line is part or all of the opening sentence that may start the lead paragraph. For older texts the Latin term incipit ('it begins') is in use for the very first words of the opening sentence. [citation needed]
Avoid cluttering the first sentence with a long parenthetical containing items like alternative spellings and pronunciations: these can make the sentence difficult to read. This information should be placed elsewhere. If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence, [C] although there are exceptions:
If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here). However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. There should be no space next to the inner side of a bracket. An opening bracket should usually be preceded by a space.
A lead paragraph (sometimes shortened to lead; in the United States sometimes spelled lede) is the opening paragraph of an article, book chapter, or other written work that summarizes its main ideas. [1] Styles vary widely among the different types and genres of publications, from journalistic news-style leads to a more encyclopaedic variety.
The first sentence should usually state: Name(s) and title(s), if any (see also WP:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)). Handling of the subject's name is covered below in § First mention. Dates of birth and death, if found in secondary sources (do not use primary sources for birth dates of living persons or other private details about ...
The first few sentences should mention the most notable features of the article's subject – the essential facts that every reader should know. Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article; the article should provide further details on all the things mentioned in the lead.
If its subject is amenable to definition, then the first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist. [5] Similarly, if the subject is a term of art , provide the context as early as possible.
Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization.In English, capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, acronyms, and for the first letter of a sentence. [a] Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.