TypeCraft:Manual of Style

On the TypeCraft wiki you write about something linguistic related to data stored in the TypeCraft database. Article mostly belong to 3 different categories:

• Grammar Squib a short linguistic analysis
• Typological Template an overview table showing some of the important features of a TypeCraft laguage
• Annotating [LANGUAGE NAME] a talk page about annotation issues

TypeCraft wiki pages can be cited

--Basic guidelines for referencing --Basic guidelines for scientific writing + data transclusion

Writing online text is different from writing article for print

The online reader is more a scanner for information: "Can I see quickly what this page is about?" and "Are there links that lead me more directly to what I am interested in?"

W most readers you do not have much time to develop your points (much less than in a book, or a long feature article). It is therefore best to get to the point and to write in plain language -whatever that might be.

But most likely those that read your TypeCraft wikipage are language experts well familiar with linguistic terminology. You do not want to write too rudimentary and use the shared linguistic terminology to get the information that is most important to them across in an efficient way.

Best Practices

Use clear headlines. Make them informative, do not try to get cute.

Use scientific style but get faster to the point then in a standard linguistic article where you are expected to provide background. Rather use links to do so. Use data from your annotated text to ground your analysis, exemplify a fact, or to describe an annotation schema in detail.

Online is always about visual effects. Break your writing up by a graphic element or white spaces. Use lists when possible or highlight elements by bold text etc.

What is unique to TypeCraft is that you can keep your linguistic writing close to the data. However avoid proliferation of examples. If interested in the data, the reader can directly go to your material in the database for further inspection.

Sign you TypeCraft wiki article. Link to your user page. If you are interested in communication with other users of TypeCraft about your data, provide a TypeCraft e-mail link from your user page. Do not provide your e-mail address directly, use the "my preferences" menu instead, and enable to TypeCraft e-mail service instead.

Your page in numbers

Rather create several TypeCraft wikipages than one long one, so here some primitive guidelines:

• use three headers and if needed 2 subheads each

• not more than 1 link in each section or subsection.

• not more than two graphical element per article. Make sure that is helps readers. Random photos are boring.