Originally published on Cohost. It did not get a lot of traction, but it turned out to be quite important for me, since writing down these rules has compelled me to follow them ever since, for better or worse.
- The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, and “MAY”, when in all-caps, are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119, both in this document and in all documents written to this style guide.
- punctuation SHOULD go outside the boundaries of a link’s text.
- in general, commas are for pauses in speech, so no hard & fast rule on the oxford comma, though it is preferred. you should consider breaking up a sentence if it becomes too run-on, however.
- groupings of nouns SHOULD use ”&”, and concatenation of sentences SHOULD use “and”.
- if a grouping is joined by ”/”, it is as if all options are being read in parallel.
- in any grouping, each option MUST be grammatically correct if read alone.
- the spelling changes though -> tho & through -> thru MUST be used. i am pushing these thru by force.
- “thorough” is not a real word and SHOULD NOT be used.
- quotation marks MUST contain only the punctuation of the quoted sentence; no more, no less.
- "" (non-curly quotes) are the only acceptable quotation marks; other options like «» (french), „“ (german), or “” (curly) MUST NOT be used, unless explicitly present in quoted text.
- similarly, ’ (non-curly apostrophe) is the only acceptable apostrophe.
- if the source of some word comes directly from code, you SHOULD surround it in `backticks`, even if there is no markdown renderer.
- capital letters for Proper Nouns à la old(er) english, for Technical Terminology, or Just For Emphasis are all valid. if writing in paragraphs of text, one MAY capitalize the first letter of each sentence to improve readability.
- the use of semicolons is encouraged! semicolons separate sentences that are related enough for a period to seem a bit awkward, but not so related that a comma would work better; this is why the semicolon is comprised of both a period and a comma, you see.
- “and/or” MUST NOT be used. “or” as a joiner is always inclusive, unless the list is preceded by “either”.
- latin-isms like “e.g.”, “i.e.”, and “ex.” SHOULD be avoided, because I cannot tell the difference between them. “etc.” is the only acceptable one, and it MUST appear in shortened form, always including the period.
- hyphens SHOULD be used to indicate you are:
- making up a word on-the-spot (see above).
- using some pre-existing phrase (see above).
- to avoid umlauts (see above).
- parentheticals MAY be full sentences. if a paranthetical is a full sentence, the parenthesis MUST enclose the sentence exactly, including ending punctuation. otherwise, the parenthesis SHOULD come before the ending punctuation of the containing sentence. (this rule clearly delineates the two types of parentheticals.)
- y’all MUST use “y’all” for 2nd person plural.
- possessives’ apostrophes MUST have the apostrophe after the s when plural, where applicable.
- if the source of some word has diacritical marks, you MUST keep them (see blåhaj).
- use _underscores_ for emphasis, and *stars* for action descriptions, even if there is no markdown renderer, and even if markdown itself just makes both into italics.
- acceptable emoji outside of short-form texts (use sparingly): 😤😔
- on co host dot org, all eggbug emoji are also acceptable.
- emoticons are more often accepted. :) & :P are most common.
- always refer to Cohost as co host dot org.
- remember to have fun!