Library of Formatting Examples:Style Guide

This goal of this style guide is to create a consistent, helpful, easy to read Library of Formatting Examples (LoFE). These are not hard and fast rules, but guidelines intended to help both writers and readers. Feel free to break them if it makes sense in context, but please follow them unless there's a reason not to.

General principles

• Distributed Proofreaders has volunteers from all over the world. However, for consistency, use American spelling where there is a choice of correct spellings. For example: color, not colour; theater, not theatre; organize, not organise.
• Aim for a tone that is a bit formal without being stilted. Use full sentences, and avoid local or regional slang.

Example text vs. discussion

Where possible, put all discussion of the example in the discussion section. Comments in the example text can be helpful to point to a specific area of the example, but comments in the text should be short and any important information should be repeated in the discussion.

Capitalization

Use sentence case for headings and titles in the LoFE. In headings and discussions, only capitalize proper nouns, titles, and other words that are always capitalized.

Specifically:

• Do not capitalize terms like "small caps" or "thought break".
• Do not capitalize words for emphasis, except in monospaced fonts where other forms of emphasis are not available. See the next section for details.

Emphasis

• Use boldface for most forms of emphasis. By default, the LoFE displays in a sans serif font; boldface shows up better than italics in sans serif, especially on a screen.
• Use italics for book titles, foreign language terms, and other commonly italicized matter other than emphasis.
• Use ALL CAPS for emphasis only in monospaced text, such as formatted example text.
• If you are linking to another document, such as the Formatting Guidelines, it is not necessary to also emphasize it; the hyperlink is enough.
• Never use "quotation marks" for emphasis.

Page breaks

The Formatting Guidelines state that "each page is a separate unit." In practice, several examples discuss cross-page markup. Bear in mind that a user should never be required to look back or ahead in order to mark up a page correctly.

Terminology

DP-specific terminology

There are some terms that are commonly used at Distributed Proofreaders but not commonly used elsewhere. These include gesperrt and thought break. When using one of these terms, consider including a clarification like "gesperrt (spaced-out text)" or a hyperlink to the relevant section of the LoFE.

Blackletter, Fraktur, and Antiqua

The general term is blackletter (no space, no hyphen). Fraktur is a specific type of black letter type common in German text. Antiqua is an alternative typeface used in German books, sometimes mixed with Fraktur. In general, use "blackletter" when writing about non-German texts and "Fraktur" for German texts.

"Fraktur" and "Antiqua" are proper nouns and are capitalised; "black letter" is not.

Blank lines and spaces

When talking about white space in formatting, always be clear whether you're talking about blank lines (vertical space) or spaces (horizontal white space).

Bold vs. boldface

The preferred terminology, as used in the Guidelines, is bold text. The LoFE has historically called the section "Boldface," but "bold" or "bold text" is preferred within the discussion text.

Book vs. project

Not every project at Distributed Proofreaders is a book. Use "project" whenever it makes sense to do so. However, book is a useful shorthand and should be used where "project" would be awkward or unclear. For example:

Always review the Project Comments before working on a project.
The copyright notice normally appears near the front of a book.

Avoid other terms, such as "work" or "text".

Containers and separators

When discussing proper placement of inline markup, containers are punctuation like parentheses or quotation marks that go around a clause, and separators are punctuation like commas and semicolons that go between two clauses. Both normally go outside of inline markup.

Dialogue

Preferred to "dialog."

Electronic book (e-book)

The preferred terms for a book presented in any electronic format are electronic book or e-book. Avoid "ebook" and "eBook."

Front matter/back matter

When discussing front and back matter, you may want to specify whether items that have their own formatting requirements, like tables of content or indexes, are included.

Heading vs. header

A heading introduces a text or a section of a text; for example, a chapter number and title is a heading; so is section number. A header is something separate from the text; for example, a page number, or a repeated title at the top of a page. If the Formatting Guidelines treat something as a chapter or section break, it is probably a heading, not a header.

Hyphens

Where a word may be written with or without a hyphen, the version without a hyphen is generally preferred unless an entry here specifically asks for a hyphen. For example: semicolon, not semi-colon; half title not half-title; small caps not small-caps; blackletter not black-letter.

Indexes, not indices

Use "indexes" as the plural of "index".

Inline and out-of-line formatting.

Formatting that appears on the same line as the text, like italics or small caps, is called inline formatting (with no hyphen). Out-of-line formatting (with hyphens) is formatting that appears between lines of text. The two types of out-of-line formatting are:

• No-wrap. This markup looks like this: /*...*/ and is used when line breaks need to be preserved.
• Block quotes. This is the term for markup that looks like this: /#...#/. It is often used for things other than block quotes, such as hanging indents. It is sometimes called "rewrap" (no hyphen).

When clarifying what a particular markup looks like, use the opening tag, a three-dot ellipsis, and the closing tag. For example, <i>...</i> for italics or /*...*/ for no-wrap.

Library of Formatting Examples/LoFE

The Library of Formatting Examples is too long a name to use in full. Shorten it to the LoFE (with a lowercase "o"), or these examples (with a lowercase "e").

Proofing and proofreading

The words proofing, proofreading, and proofreader can be confusing. They are sometimes used for the whole Distributed Proofreaders process, from P1 to F2, and sometimes just for the proofreading rounds but not the formatting rounds.

Use "proofing" or "proofreading" if the meaning is clear in context; for example:

This is a proofreading task, not a formatting task

In other cases, consider a more specific term, like "the proofreading rounds." "Proofreading" is preferred to "proofing."

Quotation marks

Preferred to "quote marks" or "quotes". Specify single or double quotation marks only if it's relevant.

Rejoining lines of poetry

We ask formatters to rejoin lines of verse that have been split across lines because they were too long for the width of the page. This is preferred over "unwrap."

Small caps

Follow the Formatting Guidelines in distinguishing between:

ALL CAPS,

all small caps, and

Mixed Small Caps or Mixed Case Small Caps.

Synopsis

Some books include a short summary of the contents of a chapter as part of the chapter heading. This is called a synopsis.