Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Suggestions Box => Topic started by: The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers on October 06, 2004, 11:00:52 AM
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I'm going to start writing up an in-house Style guide for TWG. I need contributions
Here are some things I want to put in it
It's "game master" not "gamemaster" or "Game Master," however, since it's from a specific game, it is still "Dungeon Master"
GM rather than gm
RPG is fine, as is "roleplaying game" or "roleplaying" but let's not use "role playing"
the usage we'll use is FPS, first-person shooter, RTS, real time strategy, side-scroller MMOG or MMORPG.
Internet is capitalized, as is Web when referring to the same.
I'm not sure if we want to do email or e-mail. Word recognizes both, though e-mail was previously "more correct." I think we should pick one and use it.
Italicize specific product names, but not brands. so it's the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook but it's GURPS, or Savage Worlds.
Abbreviations are fine and should be capitalized. Player's Handbook, despite being only two words, is abbreviated PHB. Make sure your abbreviated term is quite obvious, at least to someone with a basic familiarity with the product/genre.
There are a limited number of HTML tags that submitters should be familiar with and I would like to see used.
<P> starts each paragraph
<I>italicized text goes here</I>
<B>bold text goes here</B>
Unless you already know how to do an <IMG> tag AND to format the text (usually using a table) so that it looks at least as good as the UXB blogs (not amazing, just at least that good), then just paste a URL to any picture you want to use in the place where it goes. I'll work out the rest.
Feel free to use more advanced code like tables and ordered and unordered lists. If you do, please make sure your code is correct.
Remember that HTML (such as in the articles) uses angle brackets: <> while the forum uses square brackets: []
Feel free to include links to web material relevant to your discussion. If you don't know how to make a link in HTML, just paste the URL, I'll fix it. If you DO know how to make a link, please include TARGET="_blank" inside the <A> tag.
Please break up really huge paragraphs. Gramatically, it may be more accurate to use a single paragraph, but it makes it easier for users to read if the paragraphs are short, and we want to hold them.
Remember, with these guidelines, it's not that another way of doing it is WRONG, it's just that it is much more professional to be consistant with presentation.
I'm flexible on most of these rules, so long as we can find a standard and stick with it.
Please post additional terms and rules we should be using. I'm especially looking at you editor types, like Ookla, Stacer, and Fell for ideas on this. I hope 42 has some really good ideas too.
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ummmm, freak?
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no. that was NOT helpful.
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Well, I'm guessing this is for the articles and such.
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"I'm going to start writing up an in-house Style guide for TWG"
THat's a publishing standard.
Did you think, that even in the face of people who spell like Spriggan and Rican, that I meant I wanted to police spelling by people on the message board?
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That’s what spell check is for and editors. To help Spriggan and I make it look like we can spell and have correct grammar but in reality a third grader could kick my fanny in a spelling bee.
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SE, I've been meaning to suggest this for weeks, especially because there are so many specialized things that I have to keep asking about. Wonderful!
I'll try to make a list of things that I need to either ask about or point out, perhaps when I take a study break this afternoon or evening.
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yes, I'll be making a prettier version of it. Probably post it or edit it onto the article describing the rating system. Which, incidentally is something we proofreaders should check if we're doing content. the number of clocks should jive with the text of the review.
Here's some more. Game version numbers
D&D3e (Dungeons and Dragons, Third Edition)
D&D3.5 (Dungeons and Dragons v.3.5)
I think we need to do it for GURPS too. v.2 was soooo long ago that when you say GURPS you generally mean 3e, but 4e is so recent that both may still come up, so:
GURPS3e
GURPS4e
Magic is abbreviated MtG (unless there's a fuss and we prefer M:tG, then we'll change it across the board). Expansions for Magic are by name (Kamigawa, Apocalypse) except the "editions" which are then MtG7e, etc
Video games don't generally have the same problems.
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Maybe all the department heads should come up with a list of commonly used terms.
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we don't really HAVE dept heads. Sprig sorta. Skar sorta. that's it.
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I think we should write a seperate HTML how to page and link it to the article submission page.
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I prefer the term gamemaster to game master.
I greatly prefer email to e-mail. I'll brook some argument for other things, but I'll probably put my foot down on email if I have to. Consider it a pet peeve.
Abbreviations are great, but the first instance of any term in an article should be unabbreviated. (The exceptions to this would be "standard" abbreviations such as RPG, MMORPG, and Magic.)
I'll think of more when I get a chance.
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I also prefer email. I have no others off the top of my head. It's the kind of thing I'll have to make a list of as I copyedit.
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I'm not posting in the forum in any style. You shall not police me!
As for articles, I'm lazy. We'll see.
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i have no problem with those changes, Fell
SPrig, I don't want to tutor HTML to anyone. That is about the whole expanse of HTML I want to worry about.
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Personally I greatly prefer internet to Internet. There's only one of them as far as I know. Even Wired News had a news article recently about how it was going to stop capitalizing it.
They still do e-mail though. Bugs me.
Not a big fan of Web either.
But anyway I've never written anything for TWG.
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Most publications I've worked for considered Internet a proper noun. I don't agree, but that's standard usage--or it was. Someone check the new version of Chicago! I only have up to 14 e.
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well, if it bugs people, let's go with what people like. I'm just trying to establish that we need to be consistent. Let's be consistent in a way people like.
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Since this is a place to get a discussion going while I was formatting JP's article it occured to me that we should have things preset in the style guide, I'm talking about the CSS/HTML one, that would have preset "box" types for easy placement of boxout text and pictures. If we do that we could start haveing more formatted articles.
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well, then make it so, as far as I'm concerned. But I dont' think our style guide itself can tell them how to code it.
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Na, it's just that they're both style guides that's why I posted it here. I'll whip up an example page to show you (and that we can leave up moderatior refrence) the differnt types we can do.
I've allready got my hands on a copy of TWG's normal style guide so I can just add the new code and get Tage or Fell to upload it.
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I'm being lazy and not wanting to look this up, do you have a set size for the blog pics SE? I plan on haveing several picture ones for better blog layout.
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the pictures linked to are whatever size they are whenever I cut all the stuff in the picture you don't need.
The thumbnails are those same cropped pictures set to a height of 200px. The width is variable, size I keep the aspect ratio in tact.
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so they're allwayse 200px high then? K, that makes my job easier.
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always. Yes.
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Since I love to read Chicago (snert) I looked it up.
I can't find where Chicago 15 ever explicitly states it, but in every instance in the manual, the word is capitalized.
See 6.17, 6.110, and 6.119.
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that's why I capitalized it. I've not seen it used in a reference other than capitalized.
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luckily in most of the books I work on, there's no difference between the lowercase and uppercase letters. ;)
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resurrecting this for an FYI:
I have made it policy to italicize movie titles, like books, rather than put them in quotes. For conformity's sake, I would like to stick with that, so it'd be helpful if people submitting anything that refers to a movie use the <I></I> tags rather than quote marks. I'm not sure what I'd do about shorts. It seems to me if full-length films are italicized like books, then perhaps short features, like cartoons, might be in quotes. For example, the Superman cartoon SERIES would be italicized, but the episode "The Metal Monster" gets quotes. I'm not sure how that applies to non-series cartoons like the Pixar shorts. I'm seeking opinions from anyone who has an opinion on it, but esp from those who do a lot of editing (like Stacer).
BTW, I still plan on writing up a style guide, I just have too much on my plate right now. This thread is for determining what our standard styles would be, so if you notice something that needs it, post it here.
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I agree. Short films in quotes, feature length in italics. Same goes for books vs. short stories.
Also, we need a consistent style on stressed words. Some people use all caps and some use italics. I can see the need to use all caps to stress something even more than italics might, but in general, I think italics works for most stresses.
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since it's HTML, I almost prefer bold. But I'm unsure of my feelings on that. I'll wait for more people to weigh in.
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Yeah, that crossed my mind, too. Whatever it is, it should be consistent. I think all caps should be reserved for the times when someone feels like shouting.
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All caps is bad and childish. At least thats the general feeling I have when ever I see all caps thanks to how people use them on the net. If we can lets keep to bold and italics unless it's a product title.
Also we should use <strong></strong> instead of <b></b> and <em></em> for <i></i>. <b> and <i> in html and xhtml have be demoted (ie strond and em replaced them with new features) and it's considered bad codeing to use them.
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I've never known that. What do they do? Same thing, only different code?
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More or less, I'm not sure 100% why they got changed but the W3 (the people that standerize HTML and other Web code) thought it was the right move. They're in a group called "Phrase elements" which deal more with speaking and writeing not design. Also some browers for the blind read websites useing speach and they cannot empesise <b><i>.
The presentation of phrase elements depends on the user agent. Generally, visual user agents present EM text in italics and STRONG text in bold font. Speech synthesizer user agents may change the synthesis parameters, such as volume, pitch and rate accordingly
On the W3's HTML 4.1 page (the most current version) <b> and <i> are listed under the Font section. The general rule of thumb is to use CSS (style sheets) to affect fonts.
So basicaly what I'm saying is, if your writeing a an artilce and want to empesise something use <strong> or <em>. If your a web designer wanting to make your text fancy for design pourpose you use <b> and <i> (though you should change the style of your fonts in a style sheet and not use <b> or <i> in your html).
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I agree that all caps looks amateurish and ridiculous. Thanks for the html coding update.
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My thoughts:
I strongly prefer capitalizing Game Master. Is there a particular reason we don't?
And why do we italicize films?
WFRP 2nd edition should probably be shortened to either WFRP2 or WFRP2e (I think the first is much more common - a quick Google search verifies this).
I prefer internet uncapitalized, and I always write "email", though I think "e-mail" looks better.
I regularly italicize to show emphasis, but I bold for strong emphasis (if I feel something is particularly important to clarify).
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Internet is supposed to be capitalized, it's considered a proper noun now.
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email is much more commonly used than e-mail these days. It's what I prefer to go with.
I guess I don't have a problem capitalizing Game Master. I made the decision I did because it's so system non-specific. a Dungeon Master is like a sub-type of game masters (which in turn are a subtype of referee, if you want to be hierarchal about it).
I italicize films because that is the MLA standard (for papers, underlining, so same thing). My policy more or less follows MLA (at least as of 5th edition, which is the last time I bothered buying a handbook), with the exception of shorts and episodes, which I didn't see a reference for in my brief research.
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I prefer to keep game master in lower case. We don't capitalize player, why should we capitalize game master?
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I capitalize Player Character, and I capitalize Game Master.
Not player, not game, not master.
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well, I see more connection between "player" and "game master" than I do between "Player Character" and "game master." Player is a type of non-judicary (is that a word) game participant. Player Character is the role that participant takes on. A game master is a type of judiciary game participant. Among the roles he takes on are Nonplayer Characters.
in the end, it's Jade Knight, Fellfrosch, and I that need to agree. Anyone else can throw out "that's annoying" so we don't alienate our following, but since we're handling the proofing and policy, we three need to come to consensus.
Since I prefer lower case game master, I would prefer to stick with that.
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Seconded.
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Well, I guess I'm outvoted, then.
I will confess that I like capitalization more than is standard in English.
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Let's refrain from turning every article-based thread into a discussion of that article's proofing errors. Now that you're official, Jade, you don't need to point out your changes--just make them. We trust you, or wouldn't have made you a mod. If you have questions, bring them up in a proofing-only thread in this section.
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Okay. Will do.
My apologies.
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No problem, thanks for your efforts. You're doing a good job.
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E, do you think there's any way you can get 1-2 days ahead of schedule with editing?
It'd make my job much easier.
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you mean in formatting? I suppose so. I'll make an effort on that.
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Thanks.