Style Guide

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

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.

[stacer]

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.

[Spriggan]

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.

[stacer]

I've never known that. What do they do? Same thing, only different code?

[Spriggan]

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).

[Mistress of Darkness]

I agree that all caps looks amateurish and ridiculous. Thanks for the html coding update.

[The Jade Knight]

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).

[Spriggan]

Internet is supposed to be capitalized, it's considered a proper noun now.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

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.

[Fellfrosch]

I prefer to keep game master in lower case. We don't capitalize player, why should we capitalize game master?

[The Jade Knight]

I capitalize Player Character, and I capitalize Game Master.

Not player, not game, not master.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

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.

[Fellfrosch]

Seconded.

[The Jade Knight]

Well, I guess I'm outvoted, then.


I will confess that I like capitalization more than is standard in English.

[Fellfrosch]

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.