Manual of Style (MOS)

Maintained by Jana Wilcoxen --jwilcoxen 11:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

PAGE IN PROGRESS

This Manual of Style, often abbreviated MoS or MOS, is a Style guide for Culture.si articles. This main page contains basic principles.

If the Manual of Style does not specify a preferred usage, please discuss the issue on the talk page.

General principles

Follow the sources

Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by seeing what other writers do about the problem. Unless there is some clear reason to do otherwise, it is generally a good idea to follow the usage of reliable secondary sources in English on the subject; the sources for the article itself should be reliable. If the sources for the article can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage as a whole, follow current English usage instead — and discuss it on the talk page. Stay tuned for a list of preferred sources.

Article titles, headings, and sections

These rules apply to the titles of Culture.si articles, not to the titles of external articles that are cited.

Article titles

• In general, article titles should be the English name of the organisation under discussion. The following article titles are the exceptions to this rule:
  • Names of the following organisations:
  • Names of the following types of organisations:
  • Names of magazines, exhibitions, festivals should be titled as: Ampak Magazine, HAIP Festival
  • Articles which are meant as introductions to the field or historical overviews of the field in Slovenia.
• For venues use a comma like this: Cankarjev dom, Kosovel Hall
• This wiki is case sensitive: KIBLA / Kibla, ŠKUC / Škuc ... please, check the official case!
• The initial letter of a title is capitalised (except in very rare cases, such as eBay). Otherwise, use Sentence case, that is, use capital letters only where they would be used in a normal sentence Funding of UNESCO projects, not Funding of UNESCO Projects). --> Actually, not sure. Maybe regular Title Case would be better, not Sentence case.
• A, an, and the are normally avoided as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless part of a proper noun (The Hague).
• Article titles should conform to Culture.si’s Naming conventions.
• Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).
• Special characters—such as the slash (/), plus sign (+), braces ({ }), and square brackets ([ ])— are avoided; the ampersand (&) is replaced by and, unless it is part of a formal name (Emerson, Lake & Palmer).
• The final visible character of a title should not be a punctuation mark, unless the punctuation is part of a proper name, an abbreviation or acronym is used with punctuation or a closing parenthesis or quote is needed (Architects' Bulletin (ab)).

This guidance also applies to Section headings, below.

Body

• apply translations like this: Pekarna (in English: bakery)??? -> Pekarna Cultural Centre
• decades: 80s, 90s

Formatting

Italics

Emphasis

Italics are used sparingly to emphasise words in sentences (and boldface is normally not used for this purpose). Generally, the more highlighting in an article, the less its effectiveness.

Italics may also be used where a term is being introduced or distinguished in meaning: ‘‘‘The enamel organ is composed of the outer enamel epithelium, inner enamel epithelium, stellate reticulum and stratum intermedium.’‘‘

Titles

Italics are used for the titles of works of literature and art, such as books, paintings, films (feature-length), television series, and musical albums. The titles of articles, chapters, songs, television episodes, short films, and other short works are not italicised, but are enclosed in double quotation marks.

Italics are not used for major revered religious works (for example the Bible, the Qur'an, and the Talmud).

Words as words

Italics are used when mentioning a word or letter (see Use–mention distinction) or a string of words up to a full sentence: The term panning is derived from panorama, a word coined in 1787; The most commonly used letter in English is e. For a whole sentence, quotation marks may be used instead: (1) The preposition in She sat on the chair is on, or (2) The preposition in "She sat on the chair" is "on". Mentioning (to discuss such features as grammar, wording and punctuation) is different from quoting (in which something is usually expressed on behalf of a quoted source).

Foreign words

Culture.si prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not commonly used in everyday English. Proper names (such as place names) in other languages, however, are not usually italicised.

Quotations in italics

For quotations, use only quotation marks (for short quotations) or block quoting (for long ones), not italics. (See Quotations below.) This means that (1) a quotation is not italicised inside quotation marks or a block quote just because it is a quotation, and (2) italicisation is not used as a substitute for proper quotation formatting.

Italics within quotations

Italics are used within quotations if they are already in the source material, or are added by Wikipedia to give emphasis to some words. If the latter, an editorial note [emphasis added] should appear at the end of the quotation.

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest" [emphasis added].

If the source uses italics for emphasis, and it is desirable to stress that Culture.si has not added the italics, the editorial note [emphasis in original] should appear after the quote.

Effect on nearby punctuation

Italicisation is restricted to what should properly be affected by italics, and not the punctuation that is part of the surrounding sentence.

Incorrect:	What are we to make of that?
Correct:	What are we to make of that?
		(Note the difference between ? and ?. The question mark applies to the whole sentence, not just to the emphasised that.)
Correct:	Ivan Cankars's most famous works are Hlapci, Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorijanski and Na klancu.
		(The 'and', commas, and period, are not italicised.)

Italicised links

The italics markup must be outside the link markup, or the link will not work; however, internal italicisation can be used in links.

Incorrect:	The film [[''Chicory 'n' Coffee'']] is his best.
Correct:	The film ''[[Chicory 'n' Coffee]]'' is his best.
Correct:	The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Adder_%28SS-3%29|USS ''Adder'' (SS-3)] was a submarine.

Capitalisation

Dates and calendar items

• Months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter: June, Monday, the Fourth of July (when referring to the U.S. Independence Day, otherwise 4 July).
• Seasons, in almost all instances, are lowercase: This summer was very hot; The winter solstice occurs about 22 December; I have spring fever. When personified, season names may function as proper nouns, and they should then be capitalized: I think Spring is showing her colors; Old Man Winter.
• When mentioning a specific date write it as 1 January 2009, not as 1st January, January 1, or January the 1st.

Directions and regions

• Directions such as north are not proper nouns and do not take capitals. The same is true for their related forms: someone might call a road that leads north a northern road, compared with the Great North Road. Composite directions should be hyphenated in British English: South-East Asia and north-west.
• Regions that are proper nouns, including widely known expressions such as Eastern Europe, start with a capital letter. Similarly, a person from the Southern United States is a Southerner. If uncertain whether to capitalise, do not.

Institutions

• Names of institutions (the University of Ljubljana, GEA College) are proper nouns and require capitals. The at the start of a title is not normally capitalized (a degree from the University of Ljubljana).
• Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) do not need capitals:

Incorrect	(generic):	The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct	(generic):	The university offers ...
Correct	(title):	The University of Primorska offers ...

• Bodies of government, such as cities, towns and countries, follow the same rules: the names of specific cities, towns, countries, etc., are proper nouns and require capitals but generic words for types of government bodies do not take capitals. Sometimes, the full official name of a body is not needed.

Incorrect	(generic):	The City has a population of 55,967.
Correct	(generic):	The city has ...
Correct	(title):	The City of Kranj has ...
Correct	(skip type):	Kranj has ...