Style Guide

This guide concerns the word craft for all websites on the wion.com domain.

Contents

Websites Concerned

Currently:1

  • wion.com (the origin site for identity, governance, and general communication)
  • fullpoint.wion.com (an independent periodical for nonfiction)
  • wood.wion.com (an upcoming Almanossary on traditional woodworking).

Sub-domains will come and go at the editor’s discretion.

Situation

Words are just words, ever changing and emerging; we should not be too obsessed by them when context is more important. Still, making it clear what baselines are used is important if readers have preconceptions about what to expect.

These websites are hosted and managed in France, where the American editor lives and does editorial business across borders and time zones. The proximity favours a more regional style of English. Unlike American English, British English has retained much of the French influence on word spellings (meaning a lot more vowels, the occasional -tre ending instead of -ter, and so on). Yet even in British English there are different conventions for spelling and punctuation usage, noticeably between academia and news media, to say nothing of colloquial choices.

The editor is not writing academic texts, nor contributing articles to the The Guardian, for example, but he understands the rigour required to produce either type of material, and notions of each genre will reflect in the long-form published at the Full Point and in the technical material expected at the upcoming Almanossary. Other references like the Associated Press Stylebook could guide this kind of writing, but the editor chooses Oxford’s academic approach for spelling (based on historical principle), and the handling of quotation marks is more to his liking.

Adopted References

The orthotypographical conventions adopted are guided by the following references:

  1. New Oxford Style Manual2
  2. Oxford English Dictionary3

The editor does not have nor need digital access to the OED database. Abridged versions of the ever-growing legacy suffice. The Style Manual includes an abridged set of terms for ‘writers and editors’. When the scope of words in that combined abridgment is insufficient, or the reference is not at hand (such as when traveling), the Oxford Dictionary of English (iOS application) is conveniently used.4 In the rare case either source does not register a term needing referred to, the New English Dictionary is used.5

To make the Dictionary preference clear to machines (the significance of which is probably little), the IETF language tag for the OED is used in all web documents as a language attribute value: <html lang="en-GB-oxendict">.

Style Overrides

When guidelines defined in the Style Manual are incompatible with the editor’s choice of publishing technology (e.g. em dashes); or the editor desires to define a rule more specifically that what the Manual does; or the nature of a valid guideline in the Manual is easily overlooked (e.g. displayed lists), the adjusted or highlighted usage is described in the following sections. For any topic not listed here, assume the guidelines in the Manual are in effect.

Displayed Lists

All three types of displayed lists (numbered, bulleted, and unmarked) may be used in these websites. Likewise, the respective items of a given list may be non-capitalized sentence fragments or complete sentences, but never a mix of both.

Lists with fragmented items will:

  • favour split infinitives between the lead sentence and the list items
  • avoid ending punctuation on list items
  • avoid using a conjunction at the end of the penultimate item (i.e. this one, the second-to-last)
  • end with a full stop on the terminal item so screen-reading devices know where the list ends.

Spelling Overrides

When the editor chooses (albeit rarely) to override the treatment of words, whether capitalizations, hyphenations, or what may be, the operational changes are noted here.

Internet

The term Net will never be used to mean Internet; the word will always be spelled out full. However, except when beginning a sentence, the full word will not be capitalized, regardless of context of use. Exegetes can step off.

World Wide Web

World Wide Web, if ever actually used, will be written out fully and remain capitalized, though it will more often be abbreviated as WWW with no further clarification. The shortened name, Web, will never be used in reference to WWW, but if it is, by a momentary lapse of good judgement, it will not be capitalized. Similarly, terms like website, web page, and so on will not be capitalized unless used in a title, header, or leading a sentence.

Notes

  1. ‡ CSF.wion.com This is an archive site of the now defunct Content Strategy Forum, formerly at csf.community; it is not governed by the current guide thus not shown in the list of supported sub-domains. The CSF’s editorial conventions were being revised when the community shuttered, but are now abandoned.
  2. ‡ Waddingham, Anne, ed., New Oxford Style Manual, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2016)
  3. ‡ Oxford English Dictionary, oed.com The definitive record of the English language, as the site’s tagline reads.
  4. ‡ Stevenson, Angus, ed., Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2010) The iOS application by the same name is not a product of the Oxford Press. The abridged set of words the application provides are presumably based on this Oxford Press publication edited by Angus Stevenson, though it is not certain what source the app developer is pulling words from.
  5. ‡ The title used on the OED’s first edition volumes, available in the Internet Archive.