Style Guide

To help maintain a cohesive reading experience for visitors, contributors should abide by the following guidelines to keep a consistent tone and format.

Formatting

• Always capitalise proper nouns (e.g "Ffirrang" when referring to the language and "ffirrang" otherwise).
• Avoid using loanwords for anything but proper nouns. Anything else should be calqued, compounded, or written out where convenient, or otherwise discussed in the Discord if a new term is necessary (like if it were to be too difficult or long to write out).
  • Loanwords should be transliterated into Felang. Do not leave loanwords in their original language.
• Only use italics for emphasis, not bold. Bold font weight is reserved for headings (including headings for tables and boxes) and site interaction elements (like collapsible elements).
• Headers should use title case. Capitalise the first word and every word that is not being used as a function word, unless it is 5 letters or longer.
• Body text should otherwise be written in lower case. Do not capitalise the start of sentences.
• Use italics instead of "quotes" when technical terms are first introduced and normal font weight subsequently.
• Refrain from using commas except:
  • To disambiguate the separation of clauses (e.g. "meow ang mi, i' nyi mar' mew" vs "meow ang mi i' nyi, mar' mew").
  • After an adverb at the start of a sentence (e.g. "mwaw, map prrp").
  • Within lists of two or more elements (e.g. "meow, mew, i' mi").
    • Lists of two or more elements should only have a conjunction before the last element.
    • A comma should be placed between each element, including the last two (Oxford comma).

Tone and Style

• Maintain a neutral, clinical tone.
• Use just enough disambiguation so the text is easily comprehensible, yet not overtly informal or unrefined.
• Avoid repeating phrases where possible, unless needed for clarity. Instead, make use of deictic references or context.
• Nonetheless, do not sacrifice ease of comprehension for brevity or style.
  • While it is easily possible to do so in Felang, refrain from writing text that is intentionally cryptic or hard to understand.
  • One exception is if the text is within a citation, like an excerpt of an in-universe writing, where the obscurity of the text is relevant to the article at large.