Style Guide

There are many editors of this wiki, which is great, but it also means that we may all have slightly different ideas about the "normal" way of writing things. When we're writing things independently, obviously this is not a big deal, but when we're all collaborating on one project, then it can be useful to have some consistency in the little details so that our wiki looks cohesive and professional. This page is intended to be used to decide on formatting, stylistic, punctuation, and other similar issues, so that we can have a consensus to refer to when making or editing pages. Obviously, this page is also editable, so it is intended to evolve as we notice areas where we are different.

How to Use This Page

• If you're reading the wiki and you notice that there are inconsistencies (beyond obvious typos), check this page to see whether we have decided on a single way of doing things.
  • If there is already a guideline, then please fix the page to match the guideline.
  • If there isn't already a guideline, please mention it under "Unresolved Issues" at the bottom or bring it up at a group meeting. Then we know to discuss it, and when we've come to a consensus, we can add it to the page.

• If you're making a new article or section, you may wish to consult this page before or while making it, so you can adopt the guidelines from the beginning and prevent your formatting from having to be changed later.

Punctuation

• Use "double quotes" when you are quoting from another author or using "scare quotes." Use 'single quotes' when you are glossing (providing a translation of) a term in another language. Use italics when you are talking about a word in running text. This means that most of the time Mi'gmaq words will be in italics and English words in single quotes, but if you are talking about an English word as a word, you should also put it in italics.
  • Example: The word man is a noun in English. The word ji'nm 'man' is a noun in Mi'gmaq.
• Place affixes in italics when discussing them in text. Also include a dash on the side of the affix that attaches to the root.
• Place a few important terms in an article in bold the first time you mention them or when you define them.
• Use the Oxford comma when making lists of three or more items.

Page Layout

• Place a single blank line between each paragraph, example, or gloss. Don't place any blank lines between individual bullet points or numbered list items.
• There are two ways of linking to another article (see the code for these by clicking "edit"):
  • If linking from within a paragraph of text, just link from the relevant word or words. Feel free to use the pipe symbol | (shift+\) in order to make the link sound more coherent within the text. For example, "Verbs are different depending on whether the subject is animate or inanimate."
  • If linking from a general subsection to a more specific article (even if this article doesn't exist yet) about that whole subsection, place the following text, in italics, directly below the relevant subsection and then leave a blank line before starting to write the section.

For more detail, see Possession.

• Use double equals signs to make the initial set of sections within an article, and additional equals signs to make each subsection. Don't place spaces between the section title and the equals signs. Don't use single equals signs: they are the size of the article title and are difficult to differentiate from double-equals size, making it hard to distinguish between these section levels.

==Major Section Heading==
===A Subsection Heading===

Tables

• Don't be afraid to use tables when it may be the most efficient means of summarizing something. However, do try to be consistent with other tables on the same topic. For example, if you are making a verb table, check to see whether other tables have the subjects on the side and the objects on the top, or vice versa.
• Make sure to remember to put a final pipe and hyphen |- before the pipe and curly bracket |} at the end of the table, or the table will not have a line along the bottom.
• Here are some verb table templates:

VAI table template

↓person / number→		SG	DU	PL
1	13
	12
2
3
0

Or, instead of adding a 0th person row to the VAI table, you can create a separate mini VII table as follows.

VII table template

↓person / number→	SG	PL
0

VTI table template

↓subject / object→	0SG	0PL
1
13
12
2
2PL
3
3PL

VTA table template (minus 4th person)

↓subject / object→	1	13	12	2	2PL	3	3PL
1	REFL
13		REFL
12			REFL
2				REFL
2PL					REFL
3						REFL
3PL							REFL

With huge tables, or if there are a lot of tables on one page, try making them collapsible so the reader doesn't get overwhelmed. You can do this by adding the word "collapsible" to the class="wikitable" at the beginning of the table. This will generate a table that is collapsible but automatically open (uncollapsed) when the page is first loaded. It is probably most useful to make the table automatically collapsed, by also adding the word "collapsed". So the class= parameter at the beginning of the table would read in full:

class="wikitable collapsible collapsed"

An example of this should be as follows, but the collapsibility setting for this wiki isn't working yet:

VAI(&VII) table template

↓person / number→		SG	DU	PL
1	13
	12
2
3
0

You can also find information about collapsible tables and tables in general here and here.

• We may also be interested in making tables sortable by different criteria? More information here.