It appears that most of the questions will be of the form "How do I do [some action]?" I think the perfect answer to one of these questions would be a [brief walkthrough][1] of the steps required to complete the action. 

Ideally, each step would also contain a shell command (`sudo apt-get install yada-yada`) or a GUI command (Applications > Games > Gnometris) that would perform the step. The steps should be formatted as a numbered list. (See examples below)

If the question is something new users might have to deal with, put the GUI answer first. 

# Guidelines #

 - Break up your text, leave room to breathe. 

   A wall of text can look tedious and some people just won't read it. Break up your text into small paragraphs of a few sentences. Point out where the important information is.

 - For commands that users need to type into their terminal use backticks so that the site renders it in a `monospace font` so it's easier to distinguish what is a command and what is part of the surrounding text.

 - [Don't use $'s][2] for answers in the terminal.
 - Follow [these guidelines][3] for posting Software Center-friendly apt links.
 - If something is a series of steps, break it down into a formatted list so it's easier to read instead of one line.
 - Don't **overformat** *your* questions **and** answers, *they* become ***hard to read***, `remember` that **less is more**, <strike>not more</strike>.

## Images ##

 - If an image is too large to fit on the page, instead of reminding the user that
    they can right click it and select *show image*, **make it a link to a larger
    version** of the same image. Don't use pre-formatted linking thumbnails with
    extraneous information in them. 

 - Images and screen shots should be on **their own paragraph**; Make sure the image
    referece in the Markdown has a blank like before and after it. If you annotate
    an Image, you can use `<br>*Picture of a cat*` on the same line to stick the
    text right onto the image. Use this technique sparingly.


## Links and References ##

 -  If your answer is behind a link, on someone's website or in a manual somewhere,
    rather than just linking to it, **summarise the information in your answer**. Make
    sure that your summary is a good representation of the linked content, since
    the link might not be reachable in the future. 

     - **Good Example:**
        > The <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/Tutorials/Setup/Maverick">Ubuntu Wiki</a> has a solution for your problem:
>
>  - Go to the Ubuntu One Preferences ...
>
>  [...]

     - **Bad Example:** 
        > Here's your solution: http://dead-link.example.net/

Also remember that blogs and news sites quickly go out of date, punting someone to an older blog means we can't improve it over time like we can an answer right on the site.

 - **Give credit where credit's due**

   You are more than welcome to post an answer based on someone else's findings. Just
   give them the credit they deserve. Do not paraphrase someone else's text, but quote
   it directly.

   - Good Example:

     > It says that was "Suggested in xulrunner-1.9.1 in Ubuntu Karmic package "xulrunner-1.9.1"
by ZhongHan Cai on 2009-09-21". There, it says that it was "Suggested in evince in
Ubuntu Natty package "evince"  – *via <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/Tutorials/Setup/Maverick">K. Deniz Ogut</a>*

   - When you make any changes to a quote, mark them as such by putting the word or sentence in square brackets. If you emphasise specific parts of it, make your change apparent:
    > What [does] a badly formatted question or answer **look** like [...]?
    >  – *via <a href="http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/89/style-guide-for-questions-and-answers">Evan</a> (my emphasis)*

## Examples ###

###Good formatting####

1. Do step 1 (`command -1`)
-  Do step 2 (`command -2`)

###Bad formatting###

First, do step 1, then do step 2.


  [1]: http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com/questions/784/how-to-i-remove-windows-but-keep-ubuntu/794#794
  [2]: http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/282/dollar-sign-in-command-line-instructions
  [3]: http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/548/how-to-post-links-that-install-software-via-apt