HRWiki:Manual of Style

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 15:00, 24 March 2006

Capitalization

• Capitalize as much as possible according to how it is displayed on the official site. This especially includes what Strong Bad types in Strong Bad Emails.
• Whenever the words are spoken but not seen, use standard capitalization.
• Teen Girl Squad is a special case. Correct Strong Bad's capitalization to be more in line with standard capitalization.
• Capitalize the article in names that have been established to contain an integral article (e.g., The Cheat, An Ice Machine).
• Pay attention to things that have lowercase i's in unusual places.
• Strong Mad's lines should almost always be in all uppercase letters, because of his way of speaking. Exceptions are possible, such as "Did you just say parakeet?".

Spelling

• Spell words as much as possible according to how they are displayed on the official site. This especially includes what Strong Bad types in Strong Bad Emails.
• If Strong Bad misspells a word, and it needs to be pointed out, put "[sic]" following the word in question. Use brackets and italics as illustrated here.
• Always transcribe the email Strong Bad receives exactly as it appears on his screen. If he makes any comments about the email, pronounces any words differently from the email, or pronounces a misspelled word as it is written, note it below the blockquote using the following form: {Reads "A" as "B".}
• If a word is mispronounced but not written, then spell it phonetically as it is pronounced. For instance, if Coach Z is trying to say the word bomb but it comes out "baermb", write only the latter unless the former is shown in writing somewhere relevant. Do not add a visible comment (besides maybe "[sic]") unless the phonetic spelling is identical to the standard spelling. For instance, if Homestar pronounces Colonel as "col-o-nel" (instead of "ker-nel"), it should be noted.

Special cases

• Alright is nonstandard for all right. If Strong Bad types "alright", however, spell it as he does.

American English

• American spelling is the preferred form on all article pages (with a few exceptions). The Brothers Chaps use American English throughout homestarrunner.com, and the characters live in Free Country, USA.

Punctuation

Colon

• When a colon follows a word that is bold, the colon should be bold also. The two most common occurances of this are in transcripts and filmographies:

STRONG BAD: What are you talking about, Emily?

Debut: for kids

• The Glossary is an exception to this rule, because some entries have punctuation as part of them:

BALEETED!: Another way to say "deleted".

Ellipsis points and suspension points

• Whenever you are quoting material and are omitting a portion of it, use ellipsis points preceded and followed by a space:

"Well, Lasko, The Cheat is not very popular and ... I don't even think he has a computer."

• Whenever the omitted part of what you are quoting falls at the end of a complete sentence, use a period plus ellipsis points (with a space before and after the points):

"Except for that Strong Sad. That guy's a real bore. ... So, I hope I bored you back into your mind."

• Whenever the omitted part is at the end of the quotation, use ellipsis points plus a period with no internal space:

"So, I hope I bored you...."

• Whenever you are using suspension points to indicate a pause or break in thought, put a space after but not before.

STRONG BAD: You know, like the Great Leg... the Leg of Hope... Tape-Leg?

• Whenever you are using suspension points to indicate a continuation of thought, do not put a space after.

VOICEOVER: ...to have as many hot '60s-looking girls in your filmstrips as possible.

• For convenience of editing and predictability of display, use three periods (...) to represent an ellipsis, not the actual ellipsis character (…). When pasting text into the wiki that you typed in another editor, be careful that these characters were not automatically "corrected" for you, as Microsoft Word often likes to do. To avoid this, it's advisable to use a suitable plain-text editor, like Notepad, as your external editor. Note: It is also important that your external editor be UTF-8 compliant, in case there are any stray Unicode characters in the existing text.

Quotation marks

• Use double quotation marks for most quoted material.
• Use single quotation marks for quotations within quotations.
• As for whether to include punctuation inside or outside the quotation marks, there isn't really one standard, due to the vastly different things that get quoted. In the second example here, there's no doubt as to whether or not the punctuation is part of the link. Use your best judgment based on which particular style fits a given sentence.

• For running text, punctuation inside the quotation marks is usually appropriate:

"One o' them said they'd buy me lunch. But I don't see nobody taking me to Chick-fil-A."

• For other things, it is sometimes better to put the punctuation outside the quotation marks:

One of the links in the navbar is called "rando".

• Use quotation marks for image captions only if the caption is a direct quote from a toon.
• Again, when pasting text into the wiki that you typed in another editor, be careful that you haven't used "curly quotes" (i.e., ‘ ’ and “ ”). Microsoft Word also likes to change these silently. Single and double quotation marks, as well as apostrophes, should always be written with straight quotes (i.e., ' ' and " "). Again, using a plain-text editor, like Notepad, will prevent this problem before it happens.

Miscellaneous

• In most cases (unless subtitled), write "{The Cheat noises}" and "{bubbles}" for The Cheat and Pom Pom's speech, respectively; more can be added to the stage directions to indicate emotion or other actions, but do not put words in their mouths.
• When listing, if a character, place, or item has a clear debut, note it with "Debut:" before the first appearance. Use bullets for each entry with a link to each cartoon, game, etc., regardless of whether there is already a link in the running text of the article above the list. If a description follows the link, use normal text.

See also

• HRWiki:Standards
• List of common misspellings