Writing style In order to promote consistency between the myriad authors of the FreeBSD documentation, some guidelines have been drawn up for authors to follow. Use American English spelling There are several variants of English, with different spellings for the same word. Where spellings differ, use the American English variant. color, not colour, rationalize, not rationalise, and so on. Do not use contractions Do not use contractions. Always spell the phrase out in full. Don't use contractions would be wrong. Avoiding contractions makes for a more formal tone, is more precise, and is slightly easier for translators. Use the serial comma In a list of items within a paragraph, separate each item from the others with a comma. Separate the last item from the others with a comma and the word and. For example, look at the following:
This is a list of one, two and three items.
Is this a list of three items, one, two, and three, or a list of two items, one and two and three? It is better to be explicit and include a serial comma:
This is a list of one, two, and three items.
Avoid redundant phrases Try not to use redundant phrases. In particular, the command, the file, and man command are probably redundant. These two examples show this for commands. The second example is preferred. Use the command cvsup to update your sources Use cvsup to update your sources These two examples show this for filenames. The second example is preferred. … in the filename /etc/rc.local… … in /etc/rc.local… These two examples show this for manual references. The second example is preferred (the second example uses citerefentry). See man csh for more information. See &man.csh.1; Two spaces at the end of sentences Always use two spaces at the end of sentences, as this improves readability, and eases use of tools such as emacs. While it may be argued that a capital letter following a period denotes a new sentence, this is not the case, especially in name usage. Jordan K. Hubbard is a good example; it has a capital H following a period and a space, and there certainly is not a new sentence there. For more information about writing style, see Elements of Style, by William Strunk. Style guide To keep the source for the Handbook consistent when many different people are editing it, please follow these style conventions. Letter case Tags are entered in lower case, <para>, not <PARA>. Text that appears in SGML contexts is generally written in upper case, <!ENTITY…>, and <!DOCTYPE…>, not <!entity…> and <!doctype…>. Indentation Each file starts with indentation set at column 0, regardless of the indentation level of the file which might contain this one. Every start tag increases the indentation level by 2 spaces, and every end tag decreases the indentation level by 2 spaces. Replace as many leading spaces with tabs as appropriate. Do not use spaces in front of tabs, and do not add extraneous whitespace at the end of a line. Content within elements should be indented by two spaces if the content runs over more than one line. For example, the source for this section looks something like: ... ... Indentation Each file starts with indentation set at column 0, regardless of the indentation level of the file which might contain this one. Every start tag increases the indentation level by 2 spaces, and every end tag decreases the indentation level by 2 spaces. Content within elements should be indented by two spaces if the content runs over more than one line. ... ]]> If you use Emacs or Xemacs to edit the files then sgml-mode should be loaded automatically, and the Emacs local variables at the bottom of each file should enforce these styles. Tag style Tag spacing Tags that start at the same indent as a previous tag should be separated by a blank line, and those that are not at the same indent as a previous tag should not: NIS October 1999 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ]]> Separating tags Tags like itemizedlist which will always have further tags inside them, and in fact do not take character data themselves, are always on a line by themselves. Tags like para and term do not need other tags to contain normal character data, and their contents begin immediately after the tag, on the same line. The same applies to when these two types of tags close. This leads to an obvious problem when mixing these tags. When a starting tag which cannot contain character data directly follows a tag of the type that requires other tags within it to use character data, they are on separate lines. The second tag should be properly indented. When a tag which can contain character data closes directly after a tag which cannot contain character data closes, they co-exist on the same line. White space changes When committing changes, do not commit changes to the content at the same time as changes to the formatting. This is so that the teams that convert the Handbook to other languages can quickly see what content has actually changed in your commit, without having to decide whether a line has changed because of the content, or just because it has been refilled. For example, if you have added two sentences to a paragraph, such that the line lengths on the paragraph now go over 80 columns, first commit your change with the too-long line lengths. Then fix the line wrapping, and commit this second change. In the commit message for the second change, be sure to indicate that this is a whitespace-only change, and that the translation team can ignore it. Word list The following is a small list of words spelled the way they should be used in the FreeBSD Documentation Project. If the word you are looking for is not in this list, then please consult the O'Reilly word list. 2.2.X 4.X-STABLE DoS (Denial of Service) FreeBSD Ports Collection Internet CDROM MHz ports collection Unix email manual page(s) mail server name server web server