dmtdev

My own grammatical and typographical conventions have fascinated me for some time. When writing, from the most trivial and the most significant, I am dogmatically and painfully conscious of every sentence, every word, every thought, and every comma I determine (joking, joking!) choose to use. Sometimes, when I deliberately revise my conventions, I rewrite pieces of ancient, obsolete text of mine, regardless of the shame and self‐pity I feel for doing so.

Although this post’s presence indicates otherwise, I wrote this for myself: reviewing my conventions will hopefully discourage (and hopefully hinder) me from changing my conventions so often. Its presence here is of secondary concern, but hopefully it will provoke discussion among readers—at least the non‐verbal, internal kind.

When writing, I do…

Capitalization

• Capitalize honorifics.
• Capitalize possessives and pronouns of veneration.
• Capitalize doctrines, philosophies, and Platonic ideals.
• Capitalize names of genera.
• Capitalize names of regions that are proper nouns.
• Not capitalize directions.
• Not capitalize names of species.
• Not capitalize names of regions that are not proper nouns.

Acronyms and abbreviations

• Not use periods or spaces to delimit letters in acronyms or initialisms.
• In non-web mediums, include the acronym form in parenthesis when introducing an acronym or initialism.
• In web-based text, use <acronym> tags to introduce acronyms and initialisms at every occurrence.
• Not use apostrophes in non-possessive plural acronyms.
• Generally avoid abbreviations. When using an abbreviation, I always append a fullstop.

Quotations

Use block quotations for quotations that exceed three lines.
• Indent block quotations with one tabstop.
• Not surround block quotations with quotation marks.
• Introduce block quotations with colons, not horizontal bars (U+2015).
• Use square brackets for editorial marks.
• Use ‘[sic]’ to indicate mistakes that are reproduced verbatim.
• Replace confusing text with editorial enclosed in square brackets.
• Replace unintelligible speech with ellipses enclosed in square brackets.
• Alter the typography where necessary to assist readability and consistency.
• Alternate between double quotation marks and single quotation marks for nested quotations.
• Enclose punctuation within quotation marks only if it is part of the quotation (“the British way”).

Parenthesis

• Avoid nested parenthesis.
• For nested parenthesis, use spaces between consecutive opening parenthesis and consecutive closing parenthesis.
• Enclose punctuation within parenthesis only if it is part of the parenthesized idea.

Commas

• Use commas wherever grammatically required.
• Not use commas wherever stylistically appealing.
• Not splice with commas.
• Use serial commas except where their use would cause ambiguity. For example, I would use ‘He showed his friends, John, and Mary’ but ‘He showed his friend, John and Mary’.

Semicolons

• Use semicolons to separate full sentences that continue a single thought.
• Use semicolons as a lower-precedence delimiter for lists.
• Avoid using multiple semicolons in a single sentence.

Colons

• Use colons to introduce lists.
• Use colons to explain, prove, or refine the preceding thought.
• Avoid using multiple semicolons in a single sentence.

Hyphens

• Use hyphens to join prefixes and suffixes with a word.
• In digital mediums, always use U+2010 instead of the deprecated, ambiguous U+002D.
• Use hyphens to distinguish between homographs.
• Use hyphens to form compound modifiers, except where the first operand is an -ly adverb.
• Use hanging hyphens on both prefixes and suffixes.
• In handwritten text, use hyphens to indicate that words are continued on following lines.

En dash

• Use non‐spaced en dashes to indicate (closed) ranges.
• Use non‐spaced en dashes to indicate relationships between two things.
• Use en dashes with single appended spaces as a replacement for hyphens when one operand includes a space. For example, I would use “pro– San Diego doctrine”. Does anyone have a better alternative?
• Avoid using en dashes in compound modifiers when a comma would suffice.

Em dashes

• Use non‐spaced em dashes to enclose parenthetical but equally important information.
• Use non‐spaced em dashes to provide stylistic and tone-providing sharp breaks in flow.

Slashes

• Prefer other punctuation over slashes.

In informal writing, use ‘and/or’ where applicable to remove ambiguity.

Punctuation

• In informal writing, use exclamation marks, question marks, and interrobangs.
• In informal writing, Use parenthesized exclamation marks and question marks in the middle of sentences.

Figures

• Present numbers as words only when they can be pronounced in fewer than four syllables and written in less than one word.
• Not provide information to distinguish between the long and short systems.
• Prefer using ‘USD’ or other unambiguous symbols of currency units over the generic ‘$’ and ‘¤’ except when previous text makes the meaning of ‘$’ or ‘¤’ obvious.
• Always prefer SI and other prescribed standards over other systems.
• Use scientific notation (using superscript forms) for large numbers and Kunth’s up-arrow notation for extremely large, known numbers when precision is required.
• Abbreviate units in scientific and informal writing.
• Generally use SI prefixes but may present figure forms in scientific notation as alternatives to extremely high and uncommon prefixes.
• Use ISO 8601 for dates.
• In digital mediums, use digit dashes (U+2102) instead of hyphens in text that contains numbers.

Formatting

• In digital mediums, italicize programming keywords, computer commands, hash sums, foreign text, and other non-English text. When referring to the text as text, I do not use single quotes (I normally would).
• In digital mediums, use italicized text for emphasis.
• In informal text in digital mediums, use bold text for serious emphasis.
• In digital mediums, not underline text.
• In hand-written text, underline titles of creative works.

Other grammar

• Start sentences with ‘But’ and ‘And’ when doing so enhances readability.
• Not confuse ‘which’ and ‘that’.
• Always use commas for non-essential clauses and never use commas for essential clauses.

• Use who and whom correctly.
• Use data as plural and datum as singular, radius and singular and radii as plural, cactus as singular and cacti as plural, and so on.
• Choose not to split infinitives except in some circumstances.
• End sentences with prepositions where doing so is clearer.
• Not use ‘they’ as a replacement for ‘he or she’.
• Prefer comparative and superlative adverbs and adjectives over ‘more’ and ‘most’.
• When using comparative adverbs and adjectives, include both operands of the comparison.

Spelling

• Use -ize over -ise, -yze over -yse, -er over -re, and -xion over -ction (“the American way” ¹).
• Now use -or over -our.
• Prefer standard -ed endings for irregular verbs (“the American way”).

Miscellaneous

• Enclose words and other characters in single quotes to refer to the word itself or characters themselves.
• In digital mediums, always use correct Unicode character identities if possible, including for en dashes (U+2013), em dashes (U+2014), figure dashes (U+2012), swung dashes (U+2053), soldi (U+2044 ²), ellipsis (U+2026), single quotation marks (U+2018 and U+2019), double quotation marks (U+201C and U+201D), prime marks (U+2032, U+2033, U+2034, and U+2057), and minus signs (U+2212).
• When referring to the plurality of a single character (as text), italicize the character and append ‘-s’. For example, I would write “multiple a-s”.
• Use contractions only in some informal text.
• Use IPA where helpful.
• Not invent words and other dittononsensibilities.
• Not use second-person in cases where third-person is more clear.
• Use Harvard‐style citation.
• Use footnotes as supplemental notes for non‐normative information.

¹ With regard to ‐ize and ‐ise and ‐yze and ‐yse and with note to common ignorance, the “American way” predates the “British way”, and the “British way” only became the “British way” during the last century. French influence and disdain for American conventions are two potential explanations for the switch.
² Unicode incorrectly assigned the solidus to be “FRACTION SLASH U+2044” and the slash to be “SOLIDUS U+002F”.