Pacitalia
16-04-2005, 03:58
How To Make a Great Factbook!
By The Capitalist Republic of Pacitalia!
Table of Contents
A. Introduction
B. "Must-have" Information
1. Geography
2. Economy
3. History
4. Military
5. Government Structure and Political Structure
6. People and Population
7. Communications
C. Other Information You Can Include
D. Factbook Setup and Formatting
1. Keep it simple
2. Keep it together
3. Keep it in a safe place
4. Keep it organised
5. Make it nice, but keep it clean
6. Formatting
a. Headers
b. Subheaders
c. Individual Facts (Tertiary Headers)
d. Alignment
e. Fonts and Weight
E. Add-In "Widgets"
F. Finish it off!
G. In conclusion...
H. Post Factbook Stuff
----------------------------------------------------------
A. Introduction
In this topic, I'll show you how to make the factbook of your dreams. We can do this, keeping it simple and clean to the average eye, but packed full of everything people want to know about your great nation! Everyone should have a factbook - whether for their own use or intended for others to use, they're extremely helpful, especially for military or commerce related roleplays, or just general need for lookup of information.
And you know what they say, after a Gmail account and an iPod, a factbook on NationStates is third on the must-have list of tech magazines everywhere!* ;)
* - Not really, but it's fun to dream.
B. "Must-Have" Information
First in a factbook, you must have information to be formatted. That's what a factbook is all about, of course: displaying information about your country in an organised, easy-to-read format so that other nations can learn about you in an easily-accessible resource.
1. Geography
You can/should include in geography at least 5-7 of the following: relative location, absolute location (coordinates in latitude and longitude), area, comparative area, bordering nations, coastline length in kilometres, maritime claims, terrain, climate, elevation extremes, natural resources, land use, irrigated land, natural hazards, environmental issues and current environmental agreements.
2. Economy
You can/should include in economy at least 10 of the following: a paragraphical overview of your economic structure, gross domestic product, GDP per capita, population below poverty line, unemployment rate, income tax rate, household income consumption % share, inflation rate, labour force, budget, industries, electricity (production, consumption, exports, imports), natural gas (production, consumption, exports, imports), oil (production, consumption, exports, imports), agricultural products, exports (value, commodities, partners), imports (value, commodities, partners), internal or external debt, economic aid, currency, currency code, exchange rates, fiscal year.
3. History
Make sure your history is concise but don't write a book. Always ensure that you have covered to at least a minor extent all the major events that have occurred in your nation since its inception, or even beforehand if you like. This is the big killer for spelling and grammar, but easy for formatting.
4. Military
You can/should include in military at least 5 of the following: branches, manpower, available manpower, percentage of total population, expenditures (and as part of your GDP), allies, annual nationals reaching military age, manpower fit for military service.
5. Government and Political Structure
You can/should include in this category at least 7 of the following: country name (long form, short form, common reference), government type (republic? monarchy? dictatorship?), capital city (cities), administrative divisions (provinces, states, territories), major cities, date of independence or founding, national holiday, constitution, legal system, suffrage, executive branch structure and figures, judicial branch, legislative branch, political parties, international organisation participation, UN description category (check your nation's main page on nationstates.net for that).
6. People and Population
You can/should include in "people and population" at least 5-7 of the following: total population, age structure, median age, population growth rate, net migration rate, life expectancy at birth, nationality, ethnic groups, religions, languages and literacy.
7. Communications
You can/should include in communications at least 5 of the following: country code, number of televisions, number of telephones, number of cell phones, number of radios, radio broadcast stations, major radio broadcasters, television broadcasters, internet hosts, internet service providers, internet users, web TLD (domain extension).
C. Other Information You Can Include
Really, anything you think pertains to your nation and would be interesting and a positive addition to your factbook can be added. Unnecessary things like how many clowns live in your nation should be excluded from your factbook to leave room for the more frequently looked up facts.
D. Factbook Setup and Formatting
The most important thing to remember about factbooks is that they are yours. You have the power to make them personal to your style, your feeling, what you want in there, but remember, there are guidelines, general forum guidelines for sizing, emoticon use and language that you still have to follow.
1. Keep it simple
Nobody will visit your factbook more than once if they can't read what you have. Make sure that if you have lots of information in your factbook, you have made it very well organised and neat. (See Section D4 for more)
2. Keep it together
If your factbook is shorter than, say, 200 lines, keep it all in one post. If it's longer, like mine (link (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=362499)) for instance, try to separate into bunched posts. If you keep a factbook the length of mine in one post, it will take a while to save changes to your post, and that can become tedious, especially on smaller, one-letter or one-line edits.
3. Keep it in a safe place
It is especially important, just like on a regular post, to make a backup copy of your factbook in Notepad, just in case Jolt crashed and it lost your post. Just think how you would feel after all that work, and then seeing it flushed down the toilet by a server error. Save your work. Constantly.
4. Keep it organised
Don't start putting things in randomly. Before you begin to input information into the posting window, it's better to put your text and headers in notepad, then copy and paste into the Jolt posting window and format all the text and headers there. Make sure all information that is relevant to each other goes together. For example, geographically related stuff should all go in a category of your factbook named something along the lines of "Geography". Things like "land area", "natural disasters", "water area" could go in that category. Of course, economic stuff should all go in an economic category, history in a history category and military in a military category. A good example of formatting to follow is the CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html).
5. Make it nice, but keep it clean
Now that you have all this beautifully organised information, it's a good idea to start formatting.
6. Formatting
a. Headers
The title of your topic should always also be included in the topic body. So, if you name your factbook the "Randomistania World Factbook", make that the header text of your factbook. Here's a good example of how to set up your main header. Remember to remove the spaces in the tags.
[ U ][ B ][ COLOR=Green ][ SIZE=6 ]Randomistania World Factbook[ /SIZE ][ /COLOR ][ /B ][ /U ]
b. Subheaders
On a well-organised factbook, subheaders are what lead each of your categories. Place them at the beginning of a new category, and don't forget to do this. A poor example of factbook construction is when you forget to separate your categories - the poor readers will be confused as to why you have military facts in your geography section. Here's a good example of how to set up your subheaders. Remember to remove the spaces in the tags.
[ U ][ B ][ COLOR=DeepSkyBlue ][ SIZE=4 ]Geography of Randomistania[ /SIZE ][ /COLOR ][ /B ][ /U ]
c. Individual Facts (Tertiary Headers)
In a sub-categorical format, you can format your facts to have the title of the fact in bold above the fact itself, and double space between each fact. It should look something like this:
Natural mineral resources
Copper, silver, tin, gold
Natural non-mineral resources
Timbre, fresh water, petroleum
The bonus of this format is that it can be used as a tertiary header, for example in your history section. If that doesn't appeal to you, just do it in a basic format, like so:
Natural mineral resources: Copper, silver, tin, gold
Natural non-mineral resources: Timbre, fresh water, petroleum
And the third option in formatting your facts inside a category is to put them in a bulleted list format, which you can find on your forums posting page.
d. Alignment
The most common and best-looking alignment is left-align, which is of course the default alignment, but some factbooks, usually the smaller ones, are aligned to the centre or alternate per category (one category in the left, the next is centred, the next to the right, and the next back to the left and so on). However, you do whatever you think looks best and most visually pleasing. Most people are afraid to experiment and just end up leaving it as the default which is, as mentioned, left alignment.
e. Fonts, colours and weight
Don't get fancy in this category, as said, keep it simple, and stick to the normal fonts - Times New Roman, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial and Trebuchet MS. This has to look good for everyone that views it, and by using one of these five fonts, you ensure that they all do. Any bolding, text-colouring, italicising or underlining you do should be decipherable from your tertiary headers to avoid confusion.
E. Add-In "Widgets"
Widgets are images, tables, charts, sound files and hyperlinks that you can add to your factbook (sensibly, of course) to jazz the look up a bit. The best widgets one can put in their factbook are 1) their national flag, 2) a picture or two of the skyline of their largest city or a picture of natural scenery or 3) the coat of arms of the nation. Remember to use tags around the link and provide a description below. If your image is larger than 640x480 pixels, link to it instead of posting directly in the topic. Use [ url ][ /url ] for that (remove the spaces).
F. Finish It Off!
By now, you should have most, if not all, of your information and formatting completed. Just run through your post to check for formatting errors (a good way to check is by previewing your post before you actually submit) and for spelling or grammar mistakes.
Make sure you have copied your completed factbook into the notepad file to create a backup (and if possible, upload a copy to your personal website or server). Post your factbook in International Incidents where it will get the most exposure. If you don't want to put it in II, put it in NationStates, the next most viable option.
Lastly, if you want, you can put a link to your factbook in your signature so that nations RPing or interacting with you can easily access your factbook by way of that link. It's an easy way to advertise and usually is how you get your most hits, excluding topic-bumping.
As for topic-bumping, restrict your bumping of your factbooks to once every 3-6 hours. Too frequently may result in you being warned by the mods. Of course, if people are commenting on your factbook, that's positive bumping, because it keeps your factbook at the front of the forum without any effort on your part.
G. In Conclusion
I sincerely hope that this topic has taught you, as best as possible and as easily as possible, how to create a great factbook without being boring, tedious or disorganised, or at the worst, ugly. I hope this has helped you make your factbook and overcome any initial intimidation, because when it all boils down, making a factbook is fun and easy, and is something you'll be proud of. Most of all, factbooks are a true and circumferent representation of your country and make your RPing and nation a lot more realistic.
If you have any other questions about making a factbook or what to include, don't hesitate to telegram me or, if I'm in IRC, catch me there. I'll be happy to help you! :) I wish you the best of luck with your new factbook!
H. More Factbook Stuff
There are two resources that I think will help your factbook's success or make your factbook more interesting after you've finished and posted it to the wild crowds of NationStates.
Macabees' List of National Factbooks is a great way to get more exposure for your factbook, besides bumping your factbook back to the top of the forum topics list. You can find it here -> http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=398344
Cobdenia provides a factbook->NSWiki transfer service, in which your factbook is reformatted to Wiki syntax and is posted on NationStates' biggest exterior country listing (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page). I have personally tried it and I was extremely pleased with the results. You can find his service here -> http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=411619
By The Capitalist Republic of Pacitalia!
Table of Contents
A. Introduction
B. "Must-have" Information
1. Geography
2. Economy
3. History
4. Military
5. Government Structure and Political Structure
6. People and Population
7. Communications
C. Other Information You Can Include
D. Factbook Setup and Formatting
1. Keep it simple
2. Keep it together
3. Keep it in a safe place
4. Keep it organised
5. Make it nice, but keep it clean
6. Formatting
a. Headers
b. Subheaders
c. Individual Facts (Tertiary Headers)
d. Alignment
e. Fonts and Weight
E. Add-In "Widgets"
F. Finish it off!
G. In conclusion...
H. Post Factbook Stuff
----------------------------------------------------------
A. Introduction
In this topic, I'll show you how to make the factbook of your dreams. We can do this, keeping it simple and clean to the average eye, but packed full of everything people want to know about your great nation! Everyone should have a factbook - whether for their own use or intended for others to use, they're extremely helpful, especially for military or commerce related roleplays, or just general need for lookup of information.
And you know what they say, after a Gmail account and an iPod, a factbook on NationStates is third on the must-have list of tech magazines everywhere!* ;)
* - Not really, but it's fun to dream.
B. "Must-Have" Information
First in a factbook, you must have information to be formatted. That's what a factbook is all about, of course: displaying information about your country in an organised, easy-to-read format so that other nations can learn about you in an easily-accessible resource.
1. Geography
You can/should include in geography at least 5-7 of the following: relative location, absolute location (coordinates in latitude and longitude), area, comparative area, bordering nations, coastline length in kilometres, maritime claims, terrain, climate, elevation extremes, natural resources, land use, irrigated land, natural hazards, environmental issues and current environmental agreements.
2. Economy
You can/should include in economy at least 10 of the following: a paragraphical overview of your economic structure, gross domestic product, GDP per capita, population below poverty line, unemployment rate, income tax rate, household income consumption % share, inflation rate, labour force, budget, industries, electricity (production, consumption, exports, imports), natural gas (production, consumption, exports, imports), oil (production, consumption, exports, imports), agricultural products, exports (value, commodities, partners), imports (value, commodities, partners), internal or external debt, economic aid, currency, currency code, exchange rates, fiscal year.
3. History
Make sure your history is concise but don't write a book. Always ensure that you have covered to at least a minor extent all the major events that have occurred in your nation since its inception, or even beforehand if you like. This is the big killer for spelling and grammar, but easy for formatting.
4. Military
You can/should include in military at least 5 of the following: branches, manpower, available manpower, percentage of total population, expenditures (and as part of your GDP), allies, annual nationals reaching military age, manpower fit for military service.
5. Government and Political Structure
You can/should include in this category at least 7 of the following: country name (long form, short form, common reference), government type (republic? monarchy? dictatorship?), capital city (cities), administrative divisions (provinces, states, territories), major cities, date of independence or founding, national holiday, constitution, legal system, suffrage, executive branch structure and figures, judicial branch, legislative branch, political parties, international organisation participation, UN description category (check your nation's main page on nationstates.net for that).
6. People and Population
You can/should include in "people and population" at least 5-7 of the following: total population, age structure, median age, population growth rate, net migration rate, life expectancy at birth, nationality, ethnic groups, religions, languages and literacy.
7. Communications
You can/should include in communications at least 5 of the following: country code, number of televisions, number of telephones, number of cell phones, number of radios, radio broadcast stations, major radio broadcasters, television broadcasters, internet hosts, internet service providers, internet users, web TLD (domain extension).
C. Other Information You Can Include
Really, anything you think pertains to your nation and would be interesting and a positive addition to your factbook can be added. Unnecessary things like how many clowns live in your nation should be excluded from your factbook to leave room for the more frequently looked up facts.
D. Factbook Setup and Formatting
The most important thing to remember about factbooks is that they are yours. You have the power to make them personal to your style, your feeling, what you want in there, but remember, there are guidelines, general forum guidelines for sizing, emoticon use and language that you still have to follow.
1. Keep it simple
Nobody will visit your factbook more than once if they can't read what you have. Make sure that if you have lots of information in your factbook, you have made it very well organised and neat. (See Section D4 for more)
2. Keep it together
If your factbook is shorter than, say, 200 lines, keep it all in one post. If it's longer, like mine (link (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=362499)) for instance, try to separate into bunched posts. If you keep a factbook the length of mine in one post, it will take a while to save changes to your post, and that can become tedious, especially on smaller, one-letter or one-line edits.
3. Keep it in a safe place
It is especially important, just like on a regular post, to make a backup copy of your factbook in Notepad, just in case Jolt crashed and it lost your post. Just think how you would feel after all that work, and then seeing it flushed down the toilet by a server error. Save your work. Constantly.
4. Keep it organised
Don't start putting things in randomly. Before you begin to input information into the posting window, it's better to put your text and headers in notepad, then copy and paste into the Jolt posting window and format all the text and headers there. Make sure all information that is relevant to each other goes together. For example, geographically related stuff should all go in a category of your factbook named something along the lines of "Geography". Things like "land area", "natural disasters", "water area" could go in that category. Of course, economic stuff should all go in an economic category, history in a history category and military in a military category. A good example of formatting to follow is the CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html).
5. Make it nice, but keep it clean
Now that you have all this beautifully organised information, it's a good idea to start formatting.
6. Formatting
a. Headers
The title of your topic should always also be included in the topic body. So, if you name your factbook the "Randomistania World Factbook", make that the header text of your factbook. Here's a good example of how to set up your main header. Remember to remove the spaces in the tags.
[ U ][ B ][ COLOR=Green ][ SIZE=6 ]Randomistania World Factbook[ /SIZE ][ /COLOR ][ /B ][ /U ]
b. Subheaders
On a well-organised factbook, subheaders are what lead each of your categories. Place them at the beginning of a new category, and don't forget to do this. A poor example of factbook construction is when you forget to separate your categories - the poor readers will be confused as to why you have military facts in your geography section. Here's a good example of how to set up your subheaders. Remember to remove the spaces in the tags.
[ U ][ B ][ COLOR=DeepSkyBlue ][ SIZE=4 ]Geography of Randomistania[ /SIZE ][ /COLOR ][ /B ][ /U ]
c. Individual Facts (Tertiary Headers)
In a sub-categorical format, you can format your facts to have the title of the fact in bold above the fact itself, and double space between each fact. It should look something like this:
Natural mineral resources
Copper, silver, tin, gold
Natural non-mineral resources
Timbre, fresh water, petroleum
The bonus of this format is that it can be used as a tertiary header, for example in your history section. If that doesn't appeal to you, just do it in a basic format, like so:
Natural mineral resources: Copper, silver, tin, gold
Natural non-mineral resources: Timbre, fresh water, petroleum
And the third option in formatting your facts inside a category is to put them in a bulleted list format, which you can find on your forums posting page.
d. Alignment
The most common and best-looking alignment is left-align, which is of course the default alignment, but some factbooks, usually the smaller ones, are aligned to the centre or alternate per category (one category in the left, the next is centred, the next to the right, and the next back to the left and so on). However, you do whatever you think looks best and most visually pleasing. Most people are afraid to experiment and just end up leaving it as the default which is, as mentioned, left alignment.
e. Fonts, colours and weight
Don't get fancy in this category, as said, keep it simple, and stick to the normal fonts - Times New Roman, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial and Trebuchet MS. This has to look good for everyone that views it, and by using one of these five fonts, you ensure that they all do. Any bolding, text-colouring, italicising or underlining you do should be decipherable from your tertiary headers to avoid confusion.
E. Add-In "Widgets"
Widgets are images, tables, charts, sound files and hyperlinks that you can add to your factbook (sensibly, of course) to jazz the look up a bit. The best widgets one can put in their factbook are 1) their national flag, 2) a picture or two of the skyline of their largest city or a picture of natural scenery or 3) the coat of arms of the nation. Remember to use tags around the link and provide a description below. If your image is larger than 640x480 pixels, link to it instead of posting directly in the topic. Use [ url ][ /url ] for that (remove the spaces).
F. Finish It Off!
By now, you should have most, if not all, of your information and formatting completed. Just run through your post to check for formatting errors (a good way to check is by previewing your post before you actually submit) and for spelling or grammar mistakes.
Make sure you have copied your completed factbook into the notepad file to create a backup (and if possible, upload a copy to your personal website or server). Post your factbook in International Incidents where it will get the most exposure. If you don't want to put it in II, put it in NationStates, the next most viable option.
Lastly, if you want, you can put a link to your factbook in your signature so that nations RPing or interacting with you can easily access your factbook by way of that link. It's an easy way to advertise and usually is how you get your most hits, excluding topic-bumping.
As for topic-bumping, restrict your bumping of your factbooks to once every 3-6 hours. Too frequently may result in you being warned by the mods. Of course, if people are commenting on your factbook, that's positive bumping, because it keeps your factbook at the front of the forum without any effort on your part.
G. In Conclusion
I sincerely hope that this topic has taught you, as best as possible and as easily as possible, how to create a great factbook without being boring, tedious or disorganised, or at the worst, ugly. I hope this has helped you make your factbook and overcome any initial intimidation, because when it all boils down, making a factbook is fun and easy, and is something you'll be proud of. Most of all, factbooks are a true and circumferent representation of your country and make your RPing and nation a lot more realistic.
If you have any other questions about making a factbook or what to include, don't hesitate to telegram me or, if I'm in IRC, catch me there. I'll be happy to help you! :) I wish you the best of luck with your new factbook!
H. More Factbook Stuff
There are two resources that I think will help your factbook's success or make your factbook more interesting after you've finished and posted it to the wild crowds of NationStates.
Macabees' List of National Factbooks is a great way to get more exposure for your factbook, besides bumping your factbook back to the top of the forum topics list. You can find it here -> http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=398344
Cobdenia provides a factbook->NSWiki transfer service, in which your factbook is reformatted to Wiki syntax and is posted on NationStates' biggest exterior country listing (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page). I have personally tried it and I was extremely pleased with the results. You can find his service here -> http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=411619