Help:Incorporate
This page explains how to incorporate text into an article.
Plants.am articles have a standard layout for the vast majority of plants, and as information is added, it needs to be seamlessly integrated into the layout, and any existing text. If you have access to text which you have permission to use on Plants.am, and just want to quickly get it onto the page where people can read it, and others can help in the integration, you can use the Template:Inc in order to immediately accomplish this, and let people know that help is needed to incorporate the text. You've probably arrived at this page by following a link from that template.
Chances are, the text you are looking to incorporate comes from an older plant encyclopedia that we have permission to use here. The text first should be quickly cleaned out of any outdated information, and of information not relevant to gardeners. For example, the level of fruit production is not only outdated, it is also quite irrelevant to a gardener. The article should focus on describing and growing a plant, and should not dwell on its history, or the uses of a plant. Once that unneeded information is gone, it should be fairly easy to cut and paste the sentences to the appropriate sections of the page. Description, cultivation, propagation, pests/diseases and species/cultivars are the standard sections and it should be easy to determine which section each goes into. When pasting sections of text, it's best to put the {{SCH}} tag at the end of the sentence as a reference to where the text came from. It might seem redundant to put it at the end of each sentence or section, but as information from additional sources is added, it will make it clear where each bit of information came from. References to the author of a specific entry, or to images in the original text can also be removed completely.
Some information about the plant which is found in the text, should also be added to the appropriate plantbox line at the top of the page. For example, plant height, origin, habit, features, etc. can often be filled in based on the text. Again, the {{SCH}} tag should follow any use of this information.
Also, as you incorporate text from this older encyclopedia, you should note that the following abbreviations are used widely, and you can replace them with the appropriate word in order to make the text more easily readable.
Abbreviations
| Abbrev. | Full word |
| cult. | cultivated, cultivation |
| diam. | diameter |
| fl. | flower |
| fls. | flowers |
| fld. | flowered |
| fr. | fruit |
| frs. | fruits |
| ft. | foot, feet |
| in. | inch, inches |
| incl. | including |
| infl. | inflorescence |
| intro. | introduced |
| lf. | leaf |
| lft. | leaflet |
| lfts. | leaflets |
| lvd. | leaved |
| lvs. | leaves |
| Prop. | propagated, propagation |
| segm. | segment |
| segms. | segments |
| st. | stem |
| sts. | stems |
| subfam. | subfamily |
| syn. | synonym |
| Trop. | tropics, tropical |
| var. | variety |
